Dress Code
by Haleine Delail
Summary: As they get ready for some major life changes, Martha and the Tenth Doctor investigate rash of disappearances in London, all connected to one dress shop.  It leads them into a dark, bizarre world that not even a Time Lord mind could have known existed.
1. Chapter 1

**Hi all! I've missed you! I've been working on something new, and it's been through five drafts now. I decided just to freakin' post it before I drive myself nuts!**

**It is a continuation of the story Things We Weren't Meant To Know. As always, I'm recommending that you read the first story if you haven't already (since it's one of my favorites). But in case you haven't read it and don't care to, here's a quick run-down of it, so you can hit the ground running with this story, without too much exposition:**

_**Martha and the Tenth Doctor are trying to halt a deadly interplanetary plague, and follow a line of inquiry to the home of a man who has made great headway in researching the plague. Trouble is, he's already dead in the basement, his body having rotted to little more than a skeleton. Fortunately, he's left volumes upon volumes of research records and results, which help lead our heroes to the way to stop the plague. **_

_**But mixed in with his lab notes, the researcher has left fragmented portions of a memoir. Just about the time Martha and the Doctor are discovering that they truly love each other, and that they have an explosive physical connection, they also discover that the researcher is their son. He had been born to them in the early 21st century, and brought up, more or less, by Martha's sister Tish and her future husband. The two travelers, particularly Martha, have trouble coming to terms with the fact that though their child would live an extraordinary life, he would never have true love, and would ultimately have a solitary and painful death. **_

_**Several weeks after the discovery, Martha discovers that she can miraculously understand and "see" time and space, whereas she'd only had a tenuous, abstract grip on the concepts before (sort of like the rest of us). This means that her body is now host to a Time Lord consciousness - she is pregnant.**_

**This is going to be an amalgam of two different ideas I've had bouncing around in my head for a while. I hope you like it. It might turn a little dark, so I hope you don't mind a little Twisted Who. Enjoy!**

* * *

><p><span>FIVE AND A HALF MONTHS BEFORE THE WEDDING, SATURDAY MORNING<span>

A boisterous voice boomed through the cramped space, giving the advice that let locals and tourists alike know, unequivocally, that they were in London.

"Mind the gap!" it said, as part of the music of the city. And though she'd heard it at least a million times, she smiled a little. It was a tiny but inmistakable reminder that she was home. At least for a little while.

She heeded the advice and took a big step forward onto the platform. As she began to climb stairs, she took the paper napkin from her pocket, the one where she had jotted the information her sister had sent her via e-mail.

Audacious Attire. It was a retro dress shop that did most of its business online, and Tish had found her dream wedding dress on the website. She had recruited her mum, Martha and Dana Chin (the other bridesmaid) to come and watch her try it on, and give her their opinion. Though, Martha knew that all she really wanted was for them to _ooh _and _aah_ over it, whether they liked it or not.

When Martha emerged from the tube station in Soho, she was ten minutes early. Time to spare, and yet, her mother still found ways of finding fault.

"Well, thanks for joining us, Miss Jet Set," Francine Jones said, while leaning cooly against the door frame in her sunglasses, drinking a lattè. Above her head, painted in pink 1950's-style calligraphy, was the name of the _audacious_ dress shop.

But Martha had made it, in spite of having awakened that morning feeling like death warmed over, so what was with the _thanks for joining us_ rubbish?

"Really, mum? I've been off the tube for exactly fifteen and a half seconds, and you're going to start _now_? Oh, hello to you too, by the way." Martha actually chuckled a bit.

"Don't you get glib with me."

She sighed. "Mum, I'm _ten_ minutes _early_."

"Sure. Now," her mother said with an exasperated shrug and one hand on her hip.

Martha closed her eyes and put her index fingers to her temples. "I'm sure there will be many times over the next several months when I regret asking this, but… what are you on about?"

"Your sister calls and says she's found herself a wedding gown, and you're too busy to come?"

"I'm _clearly_ not too busy to come. I'm here, am I not?"

"How many weddings do you think Tish is going to have?"

"Seriously, mum, I'm standing right here."

"Well, Tish said she had to talk you into coming."

"What?"

"You told her you weren't sure, and that she didn't know exactly why, that it was for _you _to say," her mother handed back to her. "Just what in God's name are the two of you doing, you and that Doctor, that you can't be here when your sister's getting married and needs you?"

"I've been sick, so yeah, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it," Martha protested loudly. She hated her voice raised like that with her mother – it made her feel like an insolent child. "It's not because I'm jet-setting, or whatever you think we're doing."

"Sick," Francine said sceptically. "With what?"

Martha opened her mouth, to speak, froze, then lost her nerve. She ended with, "Doesn't matter," and crossed her arms.

The evasive answer didn't sit well. "Well, was it a cold, or flu, what, Martha?"

"Mum, will you just leave it? You'd be the first to point out that this day is for Tish, so let's not fight, okay?"

"What's going on?" Tish said, walking up from Martha's right, with Dana in tow. Her face was scrunched up quizzically, with a bit of worry. Dana hung back, as she could sense tension in the air.

"Nothing," Martha said. "Let's just go inside."

"It's not nothing," Francine said. "You said you've been sick. Now honestly, Martha, if you're so ill you think you won't be able to make it to a family event, and you won't talk about it… you're really worrying me."

"This qualifies as a family event?" Martha asked.

"Ill?" asked Tish. "What's the matter?"

Martha shifted her arms to her sides and held her palms out, looking at Tish with wide eyes and a cocked head. Tish read her expression loud and clear.

But before she could stop herself, Tish said, "Ohhh. Wait, you haven't told her yet?"

"Told me what?" Francine demanded, tearing off her sunglasses.

"Thanks Tish," Martha snapped. "Very helpful."

"Sorry! I thought you'd have said something by now!"

"Great," Martha shot at her sister. "Why don't you tell her about the glass unicorn I broke when I was five, and that I blamed it on Leo?"

"Martha, what is wrong with your health? Tell me right now, young lady."

"Mum, honestly," Tish said, taking her mother's arm, trying to cover for Martha, and make up for her mistake. "She's fine. She _lives_ with a doctor, and she's almost one herself. If they're not worried, why should you be?"

"I'm worried because my children are keeping secrets from me!" Francine's brow was bent with worry, her eyes betraying real fear.

Martha sighed heavily. "All right, mum," she said. "But not now. I will tell you at lunch. Anything you want to know. All right?"

Her mother flattened her lips, and regarded her daughter with steely eyes. "Swear to me?"

"Yes!"

"Promise you won't gloss it over with some half-truth, or try to distract me?"

"I promise, mother."

"Don't make promises you don't intend to keep, Martha Jones."

"I'll keep my promise. But _you_ have to promise not to freak out."

Francine thought this over. She wasn't sure she could keep that promise, depending on what Martha had to tell her. But she said, "Fine."

"Brilliant!" Tish chirped sarcastically. "Now everything is peachy-keen for another two hours at least!"

Martha realised that her good friend Dana had been standing there through it all. She turned and said, "Hi Dana," and gave her friend a hug. "Sorry about all this. It appears we Joneses can't do anything without turning it into an international incident."

"It's okay," Dana said. "I grew up with you lot, remember?"

"Now listen," Tish said. "This is a happy day for me. There will be no discussion of this inside the store. No sicknesses, no secrets, no angry words or sarcasm, yeah?"

"Okay," Martha and Francine both grumbled.

* * *

><p>When they got inside the store, a tall, pale woman with exaggerated, elongated features sauntered up and asked if she could help. She was brunette, and she wore clothes that were a shade too large for her thin frame. She was peculiar. She seemed shy, even though she had introduced herself as Fiona Hart, the store's owner. Martha would have pictured the owner of Audacious Attire to be someone more audacious herself. Instead, she was Sarah Plain and Tall, rather frumpy.<p>

Tish pulled a piece of paper from her purse, with a picture she had printed from the website, and asked to try on the dress. She didn't want any of the other three to see it before she put it on, so that they could give their first impressions with her _in it_, so Martha, Francine and Dana browsed round the store and waited. Dana updated them on her new married life, and promised to show honeymoon photos as soon as she got the chance.

"Okay!" they heard Tish sing, eventually, from a far corner of the store. They made their way toward her, and found her wearing a vintage 1950's, ivory-coloured dress, and she was standing on a twelve-inch platform. The bodice was lace laid over satin, with tiny, subtle threads of gold lammé in the weave. It had a wide boat neck that extended out almost all the way to the tips of Tish's shoulders, long, dainty sleeves, and a wide tulle skirt.

Martha smiled. "I like it! It's very you."

"Yeah?" asked Tish, beaming, doing a little curtsy. She turned toward the myriad of mirrors against the wall and beamed even wider.

"It's lovely, sweetheart," Francine said. She walked up behind Tish and tugged at the zip. It pulled taut against Tish's thin frame. "We'll have to take it in a bit. Miss Hart, do you do alterations?"

"I'm afraid not," the strange woman reported. "But we do have several wonderful seamstresses we can refer you to."

"Are you going to shop around a bit more?" Dana asked.

"No, what's the point?" Tish exclaimed. "I think this is the one!"

"Are you sure, Tish?" asked Francine.

"Mum, when you know, you know," answered the ecstatic bride-to-be.

Fiona Hart chuckled. The four women looked at her, surprised to have heard her make noise out of turn.

"Sorry," she said. "It's just… you seem _so_ excited. It's good to see. I mean, it makes me happy. It's good for me. For us all."

Tish didn't notice anything particularly weird about this, but Martha did. She and her mum looked at each other and shrugged.

* * *

><p>As Tish and Francine were paying for the dress, Dana and Martha shopped nearby, gawking at the vintage ball gowns in all manner of chiffon and sea-foam green.<p>

"If everything weren't so pricey, I'd say that this must be the local drag-queen hangout," Dana whispered, careful not to let Tish, or Miss Hart, hear.

"What do you think of this shopkeeper?" Martha asked her friend, ignoring the remark, becoming increasingly uneasy with the odd woman.

"She's weird," Dana shrugged.

"Did you hear what she said? Excitement is good for _her_, then she corrected herself and said _for us all_. Like… I don't know."

"She probably meant it's good for business, and then realised it made her sound greedy, so she changed her tack," Dana reasoned. "She's just not very face-to-face business savvy. No wonder she does so much business online."

"Yeah," Martha sighed, keeping an eye on the tall lady.

The two of them made their way to the counter. Francine had paid five hundred pounds for the dress, and Tish was now filling out a card, with her wedding date, her e-mail address, and other information so that the dress shop could get in touch with her for other bride-related events. Martha nudged Tish's arm as she filled out the card.

"Why are you giving her all that information?" she whispered.

"Because," Tish said. "We still don't have a caterer or a cake shop or a florist picked out. What better way to find out about the best stuff that's out there?"

"I don't like it."

"Why not?"

"Because," Martha said. "I have this feeling in my gut…"

"I know."

"No, it's not that," she protested, rolling her eyes. "Although… it's… no, I just mean, I get a bad feeling from this woman."

"Relax, Martha," said Tish. "Don't stress. It's not good for you."


	2. Chapter 2

FIVE AND A HALF MONTHS BEFORE THE WEDDING, SATURDAY EVENING - SUNDAY MORNING

The Doctor had been repairing the TARDIS console when she'd left that morning. He had moved to an entirely different part of the console by the time Martha returned, but he was still lying on his back in the same fashion, and still only visible from the neck down.

"Hi," she said, coming in through the TARDIS door. "You look remarkably the same as when I left."

He stood up straight, and she could see that his suit was covered in muck, and his eyes were looking ragged and bloodshot. He was sweaty from head to toe, and he was panting with frustration.

"Ooh," she added, stepping forward to take his crooked, oily glasses off his face. "I stand corrected. Doctor, it might be time to stop for the day."

"I can't," he told her. "Not until I've totally repaired the gravitational modulator."

"I thought it was the air shields. How did the gravitational modulator get broken?"

"When I was repairing the air shields, I was trying to have a sandwich. Knocked the gravity all out-of-kilter with my elbow because I wasn't paying attention. You think I'd learn by now that lunch and technology do not mix very well."

"Ah. Well, can't it wait until tomorrow?"

"Why do tomorrow what could be done today?"

"Because I'm back now, and I'd rather spend the evening with you than combing through _Lord of the Rings_ special features again, while you're in here clanking about under the grate."

"You could help now, you know," he said. "And not just with holding things. I could even show you how to mentally re-calibrate the time rotor with your new mojo."

"True. But for tonight, let's toss in the wrench, shall we?"

He smiled slightly. "One hour."

She gave him a sly smile of her own. She lowered her voice and took his filthy hand and stroked it. "If you act now, I will _personally_ peel those greasy clothes off you, wash all that dirty oil from your body, and then work out your kinks, in whatever manner you see fit."

He gulped, as she let go of his hand.

"And the offer expires in two minutes," she warned with a wink. She turned and walked toward an archway which led to the inner reaches of the TARDIS.

The Doctor sighed, knowing he was beaten. The wrench hit the console with a loud clang.

"All right, so the gravitational modulator can wait," he said, following her down the hall. "But if you lift up into the air in the middle of proceedings, I'm _so_ taking credit for it."

* * *

><p>Adjacent to their bedroom and master bath, there was a rarely-used marble room, where they sat now. The Doctor was neck-deep in warm water laced with lavender oil and mint bubbles. Martha was perched on the edge of the very large tub, legs hanging in the water, dressed in her short beige satin pyjamas. He was leaning back with his head resting on a towel between her knees. She was intermittently massaging his shoulders and pulling her fingers through his thick shock of dark, uncontrolled hair. He was slowly sinking into an oblivion of sensation, and she was enjoying watching. Next to her sat two cups of cooling pink fruit juice, which they drank from Hurricane glasses. Candles burned round the edges of the room, and harp music wafted in from somewhere. Martha reckoned the TARDIS was using its aesthetic interface to pump the music directly into their minds, ever so quietly.<p>

Every now and then, they talked. They had briefly discussed Tish's dress, and how Martha was supposed to go with her in a couple of weeks for alterations. Then, after a long silence, the Doctor told Martha more details of the gravitational modulator problems and how if he couldn't fix it soon, he'd have to go to another planet for parts. After another long silence, she mustered up the wherewithal to tell him what had been on her mind at every moment, since lunch.

"I told my mum today," she said.

"Told her what?" he moaned absently.

"That the price of roasted ham has gone up at Quibley's Mini Market," she said.

His eyes popped open. "What?"

"I told her I'm pregnant," she said, smacking him very lightly on the head. "Daft man."

"Oh," he sighed. "How did she take it?"

"She didn't run out of the restaurant screaming, so that's something."

Her tone told him that the conversation hadn't gone well. "What did she say, Martha?"

"She said congratulations very grudgingly, like with this totally flat face, and then asked me…" Martha paused to put her aggravation into check. "If I know who the father is."

"What?" he asked, with a bit of a chuckle.

"It was insulting."

"Oh, Martha," he counselled. "She knew the answer, she was just hoping to be wrong."

"That doesn't actually help, Doctor, but thanks."

"I just mean… it's not like she really thinks you're out there… you know…"

"Mattress-hopping?"

"Yeah. She's just winding you up because you got the drop on her."

"I know," Martha sighed. And she did know, but it didn't make it any easier.

"And she knew it would be me. She just doesn't happen to like me very much, and… well, given the data she has to go on thus far, I can't say that I blame her."

Martha pulled her hands away from him and sat back on the marble deck, leaning on them. "Still. I'm already having mixed feelings about this state of affairs. I wish I could count on my mum, at least, to be happy for me."

He moved away from her briefly and turned around. He took both her feet in his hands and began climbing out of the tub, rotating her body sideways so that she'd be stretched out on the deck, parallel with the side of the tub.

He spoke gently. "Well, Martha, I'm happy. I'm happy for us. We're going to have a son. I know it's not the ideal situation, knowing what we know about him, but I'm still absolutely chuffed to look at you and know that you're carrying my baby, and I'm going to get to share this with you." He helped her lie back, and put the towel behind, then underneath, her head. She dangled her fingers in the lovely-smelling water at her side while he began to massage her feet. "I hope that's enough for now."

She smiled at the marble ceiling, and almost cried. "Of course it is," she said.

She let him work his magic for a few minutes, and then she looked down at him and said, "You don't have to do this. It was supposed to be about _your_ kinks."

"I like doing this," he told her with a naughty tip of his eyebrow. "Besides, you've got all night to work out _my _kinks."

She tried to shake off the rush of pleasant heat, and just enjoy the simple pleasure of his hands on her.

Eventually, her mind returned to her mum. "It's just… how can she… she's going to be his grandmother," she pointed out.

"Mm-hm, and she knows it. She's probably already out looking at little footie pyjamas and fuzzy ducks and things. She can't _not_ come round, Martha. She can hate me all she wants to, but she won't be able to help but _love_ our son."

"Even if he's just like you? And you know he will be."

"She won't care. She'll see you in his eyes, and she'll fall in love."

* * *

><p>The only thing Martha <em>didn't<em> like about sleeping with the Doctor in the TARDIS was the fact that the morning sun was never about to wake her. But that was true in any room in the TARDIS, so really, she had absolutely no reason to complain. Because in the absence of the sun, the Doctor was there. He woke her with a kiss, or a gentle stroke, or with some complete rubbish whispered in her ear, designed to make her laugh.

This morning, it was the third.

"Good morning, Martha Jones," he said, low in her ear. "This is the concierge with your wake-up call. If you would please stand and dress and vacate the room in the next five minutes, as the facility will be flushed out with toxic cleaning agents by the Housekeeping Pixies."

She turned over and opened her eyes, squinting at him with sleep still all over her face. "It just gets better every morning."

"That's the goal," he chirped, before kissing her on the forehead. "Good morning, love. Coffee? Tea? Airsick bag?"

She sat up and smiled weakly, moving gently through the nausea welling up below. She thought about it. Coffee sounded disgusting. Eggs would surely kill her. So she requested, "Tea and dry toast."

"Your wish is my command," he told her. "By the way, your mobile was making some weird noises a while ago."

As the Doctor left the room, Martha reached over gingerly to see who had called. It turned out to be an e-mail notification, and also a _battery low_ signal.

* * *

><p>When the Doctor re-entered the bedroom with tea and dry toast, it was ninety minutes later. He knew she'd need time to ramp up to her morning sickness, and get through it, before she could eat anything. By then, she was pulling her laptop case from the cupboard.<p>

"Thanks," she said. "Hope you don't mind, I'm going to check my e-mail. I got a notification on my mobile, but it's out of juice."

She pulled up the Yahoo site, en route to her e-mail account, but a headline on Yahoo's daily newsfeed caught her eye, and stopped her from proceeding for a moment.

"Look at this," she said. "_Bride Kidnapped, the Day Before Tying The Knot."_

"Hm," the Doctor muttered, eating his own toast. "What happened?"

"Erm… it says… Amanda Finneran, aged twenty-four, disappeared Friday afternoon from her parents' home in central London. There was no sign of forced entry, no forensic evidence has been found yet and no-one who was in the house at the time heard anything unusual. Amanda was scheduled to be married on Saturday, yesterday. Her sister says they were in her bedroom _rehearsing the bouquet-toss_, whatever that means, and they were just messing about and being all giggly and silly… the sister went to the loo, and when she came back, Amanda had gone. They called the police twenty-four hours later."

The Doctor chewed slowly. "That's weird. Does it say anything else?"

"Just that her family and her fiancé are beside themselves with worry, and are going to do an appeal on television tonight for her safe return. Oh… and the power went out momentarily, just about the time when Amanda would have disappeared, but it came back on straight away. Again, forensic teams could find no evidence of tampering with the wiring in the house."

"Hm."

"Electrical issues related? Maybe her television ate her, or something."

He looked at her sideways. "Not as uncommon as you'd think."

She chuckled and shrugged, and signed into her e-mail. The only new message was from Tish, early that morning.

"Hi Martha," she'd written. "Just thought you might like to know that after you left last night, mum did say some positive things. I don't understand at all why she couldn't say anything positive to you directly instead of letting it sort of tumble out while talking to me, but that's how she is. I guess. Anyway, you left in such a funk, I thought it might cheer you up to know. She said she felt she could rest easy, at least, because the child would be well-loved and well cared-for by the two of you. She's relieved that she'll never have to worry about the little one being sick, because with two doctors around, what could go wrong? She said she wondered whether the Doctor has any experience caring for children, and whether he might like to spend some time with little Keshia. Corrective of her, yes, but she did wonder – she didn't just assume that the Doctor would have nothing to offer you, which I think is a step in the right direction. And she said that we can all bet a million pounds that it will be the cutest baby ever. Again, why she didn't express this to you, I'll never know… but there it is. Please try to keep mum's behaviour in perspective. And if you can't, then just know: Robert Oliver and I are here for you. Love, Tish. P.S. Thanks for coming yesterday."


	3. Chapter 3

FIVE MONTHS AND ONE WEEK BEFORE THE WEDDING, FRIDAY AFTERNOON

The Doctor gave three hard raps upon the door in front of him.

Martha sighed hard. "Okay, tell me again why we're here."

He looked at her and blinked a few times. Then he stuck out his hand and said with a smile, "Hello, I'm the Doctor. I study and troubleshoot spatial and temporal disturbances all over the universe. I don't believe we've met."

She swatted his hand away.

"Nice," she sneered. "I'm just not getting a _temporal disturbance_ vibe here."

"Me neither," he agreed. "But a girl's gone missing, and even if it's just plain ol' human cruelty at work, it's certainly…"

At that moment, the door opened. A tall, stout man, bald, between fifty and sixty years old, answered the door. His eyes were bloodshot.

"Mr. Finneran?" the Doctor asked.

"Yes?" he said. His voice sounded even more haggard than his eyes.

The Doctor flashed the psychic paper. "I'm Detective Inspector Smith, this is my partner, DI Jones. We're here to investigate the disappearance of your daughter, Amanda. May we come in?"

The man looked at them with utter exhaustion. "Look, you people have already been through twice. What more can we tell you?"

"Well, we're from a special unit," the Doctor told him. "When they have no leads, they call us. We give a… well, special perspective on things."

He looked at them with distrust.

"Mr. Finneran," Martha said. "You can turn us away if you like, but we're offering a fresh view of the whole case. We're offering help."

The man resigned and stepped aside, letting the two fake detectives in. He asked them to come through to the parlour, where he introduced them to his wife, his sister-in-law, and his mother. Various family members, he said, were keeping them company, holding vigil here at the house, and at the fiancé's house, in support, and in hopes that the strength of prayer would bring Amanda home.

The Doctor nodded gravely, then asked to hear the story, once more, of the afternoon Amanda disappeared.

"Well, there's not much to tell," Mr. Finneran said. His accent screamed _northerner_.

"You lot have already come through twice," his wife reported. She, on the other hand, spoke like a humourless, posh Londoner. "Can't you just get the details from your colleagues?"

"Miss Jones and I have a strict policy," said the Doctor. "We get our stories first-hand, that way there are no miscommunications."

Mrs. Finneran sighed, and her husband took over once again. "Well, we were sitting here in the parlour last Friday afternoon, round two o'clock or so. I'd been running about with Ronald, that's the father of the groom, all morning, picking up the tuxedos, doing errands for the womenfolk, and I was pretty wired, so I was having a gin and tonic. My wife was pasting pink ribbons to the programmes. We could hear Amanda and Kiera, that's our other daughter, upstairs messing about, giggling and whatnot. And then it stopped. And I think… I think the lights in the house flashed off for a few seconds, then back on then, but at the time… you know, you don't notice things because they don't mean anything. We didn't know it would be associated with our daughter being bloody kidnapped!"

The man's voice had raised then, and his face had taken an almost defensive expression. The Doctor had a hunch that Mr. Finneran had been scolded by detectives for not noticing the electrical anomaly.

"All right, all right," he soothed. "I understand, Mr. Finneran. It's all right. What happened next?"

"Well… a few minutes later, Kiera came downstairs wondering where Amanda had got to. We reckoned she'd gone outside for something, but neither of us had seen her leave… Anyway, half an hour went by and we all started searching for her. An hour went by and we'd got really worried. She wasn't answering her phone, she wasn't with any of her friends or her fiancé. When night fell, and we still hadn't heard a word, we were dead scared. We called the police at two o'clock Saturday, and they checked for…"

"Right, they checked for tampering with the electrical, signs of forced entry," the Doctor interrupted.

Mr. Finneran nodded. "They found nothing."

"Okay then," the Doctor said, rather more loudly than necessary. He clapped his hands and asked, "Mind if we take a peek in the room Amanda was in when she seems to have disappeared?"

"I'll show you," Mr. Finneran said with a sigh.

The three of them reverently entered a white and pink bedroom, in which the daybed was still piled high with stuffed animals and fluffy throw pillows.

"Thank you, Mr. Finneran," the Doctor said. "We'll take it from here. We won't be long."

The man nodded and left the two "detectives" to fend for themselves.

"Feel it?" the Doctor whispered, as soon as Amanda's father was out of earshot.

"Definitely," Martha answered. "Not temporal. Just…"

"Wonky."

"Yeah. The energy in this room is all…_off."_

"It's grating on your senses, is it?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Alien energy," he said. "Or residue, or… scratching at the surface of Earth's reality. No, wait. It's… scratching at the surface of _all_ reality."

"That would imply that it's _outside_ of all reality." The wheels in Martha's brain were turning, working in a way they never had before, as she began to get her mind around what _outside of all reality_ might imply. She came up with a vague notion, something in their midst, but unseeable, at least for now. Normally, she would have just waited for the Doctor to fill in the blanks until she knew what she had to do, but not now.

"Whatever it is, it's… below the void, or beyond it, or… could it be _in it_? No, that's daft…" He trailed off, and held the sonic screwdriver aloft. He walked around the room with it, and it made an array of very slightly different noises at very slightly different frequencies. The differences wouldn't have been enough to register with Martha's normal human ears. Her new ears could hear them, but they could also tell that the differences weren't enough to be helpful.

"That doesn't sound promising," she said.

"There's definitely an energy signature in here, but it's degraded," he mumbled, teeth clenched, staring over Martha's head.

"How come we can feel it?"

"We can feel it, and the sonic can too, just not identify it. Like when you're in a crowded room, and you hear a song that's definitely familiar playing on the Muzak, but you can't figure out what it is because it's too quiet, and there's too much other stuff going on. We waited too long to come, and now..."

"Well," she said, putting her hands on her hips with a sigh. "What do you want to do next? Scan the circuit box?"

"Good idea."

They went back down the stairs and into the parlour.

"Oh, a whole three minutes you were up there. Find anything groundbreaking?" asked Amanda's mother, sarcastically.

"We may have," the Doctor said. "But we'd rather not get your hopes up until we know what's what. We have to do some lab work before we'll have anything, if there's anything, to report."

"Fantastic," she huffed. "Told you," she shot at her husband.

"Mr. and Mrs. Finneran, we'll be in touch. We'll show ourselves out. But do you mind if we check out your circuit box as we're leaving?"

"It's down on the side of the building, end of the block," Mr. Finneran answered. "Knock yourself out."

"Er, thanks," the Doctor said, frowning. He wasn't sure whether Finneran realised what he had just said, or not.

* * *

><p>The TARDIS was parked near a Tesco, and Martha wanted a lemonade. So they went inside for a few minutes and found her a cold drink.<p>

On the way out, "So, not even a blip," she said, just as much to herself as to the Doctor. "I couldn't hear any frequency difference at all on the sonic, could you?"

"Nope," he answered emphatically. "No-one has touched that circuit box, except for human beings. I'll assume that they're mostly police."

"Okay, so can the TARDIS feel enough of the frequency changes to decipher the energy signature?"

"Let's hope so."

They finished the walk down the block and entered the trusted blue box. The Doctor headed straight for the nearest side of the console, where he hit a button and some sort of slot revealed itself. He pulled the sonic from his pocket and switched it on, then plugged it in. "Come on baby, do your magic," he said to the time rotor.

Martha slid round to the seat, and sat down. She happened to glance up at the computer screen, and exclaimed, "Whoa!"

"What?"

"I can read this!"

"Of course you can," he said.

"No, but… this screen has always looked like complete rubbish to me. Like a Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass design. But now… frequency 31376. I can see it. It's right there!"

"That's right, in all its loopy, Gallifreyan splendour," he muttered as he came round the console to look. "But that is very, very bad news."

"That I can read your language?"

"No, the frequency 31376. It's a signature from the Phlotigo Galaxy. We're lucky the TARDIS is able to read it at all. Beings from the Phlotigo have a weaker energy signature than any others in the universe."

"Why?"

"Don't know why exactly, but they're almost intangible."

"Really? That's mad. How can they be intangible?"

"Almost, I said. They're just not made of very much matter. They have consciousness and thought and feelings just like everyone else, but their bodies are more like whisps of something. They're more ectoplasm than flesh. You can touch them, but it's not easy. They feel like, I don't know… like a really thin layer of cold jelly and Kleenex mixed together."

"Ew."

"In fact, they can exist just fine without real bodies. Whenever they appear anywhere other than their own galaxy, they're often mistaken for ghosts."

"Great, so we're hunting for something that may have no body?"

"Perhaps."

"So much for calling in the police sketch artist," she sighed. He chuckled. "But I still don't get why it's bad news."

"They're generally not a very nice lot," he reported. "They've got a major chip on their shoulder and they're always out for revenge or vindication or what they think is coming to them."

"Okay, so, what are they looking for this time?"

"How the hell should I know?" he asked.

"I dunno," she shrugged. "Sometimes you know these things."

"Well, Amanda, for one," said the Doctor. "But we still don't know why. What for?"

"But wait – do these things live in some kind of surreal galaxy, like on the edge of the void or something?"

"No, they live in our reality," the Doctor said. His eyes widened. Martha had got there before he had.

"Yeah," she said. "Why does it feel like the energy is scratching at all reality?"

"I have no idea." he muttered.

He was annoyed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Well, the spit's gonna hit the fan a little bit with Martha and Francine, but worry not. All their issues do not get resolved here, because what fun would that be? But at least we get a good dose of the hard and soft sides of Martha's mum! Oh, and a bit more mystery!**

* * *

><p><span>FIVE MONTHS BEFORE THE WEDDING, THURSDAY EVENING<span>

"This is a nice place," Martha commented, settling into a white cushy chair.

"I hear it's the best tailor shop in town," Francine said, settling into the chair next to her.

Suddenly remembering the semi-unpleasant experience of buying the dress, Martha asked, "Did Fiona Hart recommend this place?"

"Yeah," said her mum. "Even made the appointment for Tish."

"Hm."

"What?"

"Nothing. I just… didn't like her much."

"Why?"

"Not sure."

They both burst out with giggles and praise when Tish emerged once again from the dressing room in her wedding gown, still slightly too large. Then the lovely bride-to-be stepped up on a platform, and the elderly expert seamstress began her good work.

"So," Francine sighed. "What have you been up to? Are you taking care of yourself?"

_Here we go_, Martha thought. She braced herself for an interrogation or a lecture, or some other manner of abuse.

"Not much," she answered. "And yes. Been tired."

The latter part was true, but the _not much_ bit was a lie. In the past six days since she and the Doctor had inspected Amanda Finneran's bedroom, they had been to the Phlotigo Galaxy twice. It was, as it turned out, exceedingly difficult to go undercover there, since the beings seemed to float and were, as the Doctor had put it, more ectoplasm than flesh.

The fact was, though, that the galaxy's energy signature was wide, and it contained at least one hundred and six known planets. They'd only had time to observe four of them, before being spotted and chased, adrenalines pumping, into the TARDIS and out of town. The fun part was that, a good adrenaline rush with the Doctor meant another good adrenaline rush later, one that didn't involve running for their lives, but did involve plenty of endorphins and panting. The bad part was that at this rate, she'd be in her late eighties by the time they scoured each planet in the Phlotigo. They would continue to plug away, but would definitely need more evidence before they would get anywhere.

"Yes, well," Francine counselled. "That's the way it is. For a while anyway. Any morning sickness?"

"Yeah, it's been pretty wicked."

"How does he handle it?"

"The Doctor? He hovers."

Francine smiled a little. "That's good, I think."

"I don't want someone listening to me tossing up my guts!"

"Oh, I read that ginger helps morning sickness, just so you know. I suppose you both _did _already know that. But I didn't mean just that. How's he handling the whole thing? Having a baby, I mean."

"Great, why?"

"Just wondering. Sometimes men, when you mention children… especially his type."

"His type?"

"Oh, Martha, don't get all defensive. I just mean… you know…"

Tish chimed in. "She means handsome and worldly."

Francine sighed and gestured in concession. "All right. If you like."

"Mum, even handsome and worldly types like children. Besides, he's had…" she almost let it slip that the Doctor had had children before, but then she'd have to come up with some elaborate story for why they were never around. Either that, or tell the truth, and that wasn't going to happen. At least not here, not now.

"He's had what?"

"Just… he's worked with children a lot."

"Oh, Martha," her mother groaned. She leaned forward and took her daughter's hand.

"What, mum?"

"It's just don't get it…"

"Mum," Tish warned. "You promised to be nice."

"No, no," Martha sighed. "Let's just get it all out in the open, and get it over with. Say what you have to say, mum."

"It can wait until later," Francine said. "Mrs. Petruska doesn't need to hear our family woes."

"Mrs. Petruska doesn't understand English," Martha pointed out.

The elderly seamstress looked up at them at the mention of her name. "Yes?"

"Nothing dear," Tish said, patting her shoulder. "You're doing a nice job."

"It's just… Martha, how did this happen?" Francine asked.

Martha raised her eyebrows and blinked at her mother, letting go of her hand. "What do you mean, how did this happen? How does it usually happen?"

"Well, don't you know that there are precautions you can take?"

Martha smiled. "Oddly, yes, I do."

Francine clicked her tongue, annoyed at the seeming finality of Martha's answer. "Honey, did you do this on purpose?"

"Not exactly," said Martha, being intentionally vague. Evasion was a tactic she knew would drive her mother barmy, but she didn't seem able to stop herself.

"So, what? It was a heat-of-the-moment sort of thing?" Francine asked, her voice starting to take on that scathing tone Martha dreaded hearing. "Left your diaphragm at home? Couldn't find one of those coin-operated machines in the loo? Your Doctor doesn't like to leave the party before the end, is that it?"

"Oh my God! Mum!" Tish cried out, standing helplessly still. "Stop it!"

Martha groaned and buried her head in her hands.

Francine's heart sank a little. She hadn't begun the conversation in order to upset Martha. She hadn't wanted to bludgeon her daughter into defensive, or retreat, mode. So she took a long, deep breath.

"I'm sorry, Martha. I'm really sorry. I crossed the line there. Actually, I crossed it and then overshot it by ten miles. I'm just trying to understand," Francine insisted, reasonably. Martha sat up straight and looked at her, marvelling at how complicated this whole thing had become, and how profoundly her mother just _didn't understand_. No-one did, except her and the man in the blue box.

Francine took another deep breath and, "My incredibly headstrong and ambitious daughter, who is six months away from finishing medical school with honours, suddenly takes up with this man, whom I know nothing about. And before I know it, she's with child, and it all comes to a screeching halt! I don't know how or when or why this relationship started, and I don't understand why you'd get pregnant, if you didn't have to!"

Well, now, that was just it. Martha hadn't _wanted_ to get pregnant, necessarily, but she knew _she had to_. It was in the cards. More than that, it was interwoven with the history, and future, of the universe, time and space itself. An immutable fact of existence: Martha Jones and the Doctor would have a son, and he would help them save countless civilisations, in his time. Without this, those countless would perish, putting the balance of the universe in jeopardy. How could she _ever_ hope to explain that to Francine? Hell, before she'd been gifted with the consciousness of a Time Lord, she hadn't really understood it herself.

She acknowledged within herself how this must look to her mother: a young woman's ambitions utterly derailed by a dashing older man and his desires. A girl with a future now pinned down, pregnant and dependant. It probably would wind up looking this way to everyone she knew. Without the proper information, Martha could not begrudge her mother that wonder, that anger at what in God's name had made the strong girl _she _had raised, go the way of so many weak ones.

As Francine had just a minute before, Martha took a deep breath and pulled her emotions under control. "Mum, I don't know what to tell you. I know how this must seem to you. I understand why you're upset. But you are going to have to trust me."

Francine closed her eyes for a few moments. Then she opened them and said, "All right. I'll trust you. Tell me what I need to know."

"This is a good thing – all of it. Me and the Doctor, the baby, Tish's wedding… it's all coming together the way it should. We are in love. Do you hear me? Yeah, it's a lot of craziness and passion and heat-of-the-moment, but we _love _each other, and believe me, we have _earned_ it. I know you think that this thing with the Doctor just cropped up overnight, but… it didn't. It was hard, really hard, and we struggled to get there, both of us in our own way. We have what we need to make a good, solid, loving home for our child. And we will do it, and do it well."

"Yeah?" Francine was near tears now.

"Yeah. Promise."

"Okay," her mother whispered. They linked hands again. "Just one more question, and please don't hate me."

"Ask away."

"Is he going to marry you?"

"No, _we _are not going to marry _each other_," Martha answered.

Francine gulped and nodded. "All right. I suppose it's the twenty-first century now…"

"He offered to," Martha told her. "I mean, we talked about it. Didn't seem practical. Or necessary."

"Well, maybe in the future."

"Would you relax? You're going to be a gran again, aren't you excited?" Martha asked, squeezing her mother's hands.

Francine smiled in spite of herself, and even let out a little laugh. "Yes, yes, I am. I bought the baby a ducky the other day."

"Finally!" Martha sighed, throwing up her hands. "And it's okay. You can be an excited grandmother and still have your quiet little qualms, you're entitled."

"Thank you. Because I'm sort of qualmy by nature, you know."

"I'd noticed."

"Some of that's just me. Most of it's from being a mum. Better get used to it."

"Okay, ladies, attention back to me now," Tish chirped. "What do you think?" She turned three-hundred-sixty degrees, showing off her gown, pinned in place, fitting like a glove.

"Is good, yes?" asked Mrs. Petruska, beaming.

"Very, very good," Martha said, standing up. "And now you can see the shoes!"

Francine stood as well, and wistfully ran her hands over the tulle skirt. She had been emotional talking to Martha, and the tears now started to flow.

"Mum, for God's sake," Tish said, good-naturedly. "Martha, would you fish my phone out of my handbag? I want a picture of me in this dress."

Martha found Tish's brand-new iPhone in her purse. It was switched off, so Martha turned it on. As soon as she did, the e-mail notification sounded. But it went ignored for the time being while Martha snapped a quick digital photo.

Tish hopped down from the pedestal and thanked Mrs. Petruska. Francine followed the old seamstress to the front counter to pay for her services.

"Are you disappointed that you have to change back into your own clothes now?" asked Martha, handing the phone back to Tish.

Tish chuckled while she checked her e-mail. "Yeah, I wish I could wear it out of here and show everyone."

"I'm pretty sure that's against wedding etiquette. So, where would you like to go for dinner?" Martha asked. "I can't really have sushi, but we could try for Chinese."

"What the hell?" Tish asked, scrunching her nose at her iPhone. "Thirty-eight e-mails just from the dress shop alone!"

"Audacious Attire, where you bought your gown?" Immediately, Martha felt uneasy. She hadn't liked that place one bit, and even less had she liked the owner.

"Yes! Look at this," Tish exclaimed, shoving the little glowing screen at Martha. "They're spamming the hell out of me!"

"Classy joint," Martha commented. "Remind me to call them for my next special occasion."

"I mean, at least it's all wedding stuff," Tish said, scrolling through. "Notifying me about bridal conventions I can go to, the trendiest floral arrangements, different discount offers from stationery companies, cake makers, five different bridesmaid dress houses… yikes! Although, this McArdle's Floral does have some cool stuff… and look, D'Adamio's is having a special on wedding cakes, if you order at least four months in advance. Maybe we should go for a tasting…"

"Er, what happened to being indignant about the thirty-eight spams?"

"Well… it's kind of a pain, but if I don't like them, I guess I can delete them, right? It might be nice to be kept abreast of all that," Tish rationalised. "I haven't chosen a florist or a caterer yet, or decided where the bridesmaid dresses will come from. Maybe I'll be able to choose a band this way."

Martha shook her head, and asked again, "So, where do you want to go for dinner?"

"Sardi's?"

"Great. Give me your phone. I'll call the boys, you go get changed."

"Okay," Tish said, handing the gadget back to Martha.

With her mother up front and Tish in the dressing room, Martha guiltily scrolled through the e-mails, and found one that was an advert for Audacious Attire itself. Something about it gave her the chills, even though there was nothing untoward in the graphics or text. Something was _off _about it, and it was something she should be noticing, something important staring her in the face. She suspected it was her new "Spidey Senses" tingling, letting her know something was amiss, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She resolved to show it to the Doctor later, to see if his more highly-developed Spidey Senses could work it out.

She then phoned Tish's fiancé, Robert Oliver, and the Doctor, to let them know where and when to meet up for dinner. Both were reluctant to do the family thing; Robert Oliver was, Martha knew, terrified of Francine. But they had all agreed on dinner together after the fitting, so it was to be Sardi's in an hour.

Then, with a terrible feeling in her gut, she dialled another number.

"Audacious Attire, this is Fiona, how may I help you?"

"Miss Hart?"

"Yes."

"This is Tish Jones," Martha lied. "I bought a vintage 1950's gown from you a couple weeks ago."

"Yes, I remember you. How did your alterations go?"

"Just fine. Listen, I know I gave you my e-mail address and whatnot, but all the stuff you're sending me is really clogging up my in-box. Could I ask you just to take me off your list?"

"Absolutely," Miss Hart said. "No problem. I apologise for the inconvenience."

"Thank you," Martha said.

"Otherwise, are you satisfied with your dress?"

"Well, let's hope so."


	5. Chapter 5

FOUR AND A HALF MONTHS BEFORE THE WEDDING

"Are you sure I can't help you?" Martha asked, loudly. Currently, she was sitting cross-legged in one of the TARDIS' corridors, perhaps twenty feet away from their bedroom door. In front of her sat a half-full glass of fruit punch. In her lap was the _London Times_. Across from her, a door stood open. Inside, the Doctor was balancing on the second-highest rung of a ladder, coating the wall with royal blue paint. He was working on the area just above the door frame.

"I don't want you breathing this stuff," he said. "I can get the TARDIS to ventilate the room, but until then, the paint fumes are too strong."

"But I feel like a non-participant!" she called back. "I'm like, twiddling my thumbs while you do all the work."

He ducked down a bit so he could see her. "Seriously? You're a non-participant? I'm just preparing the room where the baby's going to sleep. You're building the baby."

She laughed. "Okay. Carry on."

And about sixty seconds after that laugh, she groaned and said, "Doctor, we have another one."

"Another what?"

"It's in the _Times_. Listen. _Twenty-eight-year-old Linnea Mays disappeared from the London Underground last night, while travelling with a group of friends between Edgeware Road and Tower Hill. The twelve women were on their way to a night club, where they were to hold Miss Mays' hen party. Maid of honour Dawn VanShelton said, 'We were there, we were all standing there in a circle in the train car, giggling and laughing and having a great time. And then, it's like the lights in the Tube went out for a split second. Almost just in the blink of an eye. People barely even noticed, but we did, and when we all looked at each other, we saw that Linnea had gone'_ _The friends searched every car attached to the train, inquired with strangers, to no avail. When they searched Mays' flat, which she shares with her fiancé, they were disappointed once again. Police have not been able to track down the bride-to-be either, and have no leads. In fact, some are calling this rather like a 'locked room' mystery, since a woman seems to have vanished, without a trace, from a moving train."_

The Doctor stepped back down to a level that allowed him to see Martha, across the hall. "Another one right before the wedding?"

"Yep."

"I don't like the turn this is taking."

"Me neither."

* * *

><p>"Mrs. Mays?" asked the Doctor, when the frayed-looking woman opened Linnea Mays' front door.<p>

"No, I'm Janet Siddons, her fiancé's mum. What can I do for you?"

He flashed his 'badge.' "We are Detective Sergeants Smith and Jones. We were wondering if we might inquire within."

"About Linnea? Well, no-one who was with her when she disappeared is here just now," said Mrs. Siddons. "You can talk to me, but I don't know anything."

"Is her fiancé home?" Martha asked.

"No, he went to drop off his daughter at ballet class. He may be back soon, though."

"Tell you what," the Doctor said. "Mind if we just take a look-see through the flat?"

"Haven't the police already done that?"

"Well, we're like special ops," the Doctor told her. Then, he added awkwardly, "Only… without guns… … and the secrecy… we're…"

"Fine, fine, all right then," Mrs. Siddons cut him off. "The place is yours."

They stepped inside and wiped their feet. She shut the door behind them, and offered them tea, which they declined.

Mrs. Siddons went to the right and sat down in the drawing room, unmuted the television, and continued to watch a game show of some manner. The Doctor and Martha turned left and stepped into the dining room.

"What do you think?" whispered the Doctor.

"I don't feel anything."

"I don't either."

"I thought for sure we'd get some kind of wonky energy from this place."

"Well, I was hoping," confessed the Doctor. "Would sure help to narrow down whether the Phlotigo thing was a coincidence, whether these are isolated incidents, or what."

"Let's go upstairs. Maybe there's something there, that's eroded away. Maybe more eroded than last time, and we just can't feel it _here_."

"Worth a shot."

But a sweep of the couple's bedroom and bathroom yielded nothing. No energy out of place, no teleportation signature, not even a dusty lampshade.

"So it's not an energy that the women themselves are carrying around with them," the Doctor speculated. "Any energy that could cause a whole person to just zip-zap away like that is strong, and we'd feel… something, especially in her bedroom. Energy just radiates off when we're asleep because there's no consciousness to hold it back. We'd sense a residue, like last time. So, it must have to do with the locale."

"That helps a little, doesn't it?"

"It means that we can research the various _modus operandii _of different civilisations in the Phlotigo Galaxy, and see if any of them fixate on certain locales."

"Like Poltergeists?" she asked.

"Maybe. Maybe that's what Poltergeists are: just some species or other from the Phlotigo, obsessively trying to scare people out of their cubby holes."

"Oh, right, the ghostly, non-corporeal… okay," Martha clarified for herself. Then she perked up. "Hey, that _does_ help."

He fluttered his eyebrows at her.

"Do you think we could find out exactly which Underground carriage it was?" she asked.

"We can try."

* * *

><p>As it turned out, the carriage from which Linnea Mays had disappeared had been temporarily decommissioned and turned into a crime scene. It was sitting on a track underneath the Transport for London office. Martha and the Doctor were asked to wait for the lead investigator, then the three of them were given gloves and went into the car.<p>

The two space travellers pretended to examine the doors on the sides, and the trap at the top, looking for any forced entry or specific anomalies. But they were really just biding time so that the investigator wouldn't get suspicious. The moment they'd walked into the carriage, the Doctor knew everything he'd expected to find out there.

As soon as the investigator was out of ear-shot, and Martha and the Doctor were on their way back to where they'd parked the TARDIS, he asked, "Did you feel it?"

"Not really," she said. "There was something to feel?"

"Yeah," he told her. "It was very, very faint. I guess I'm still just a little more sensitive than you are."

"I guess so. I noticed nothing!"

"Faint, and streaky," he mused. "Like… well, exactly what you'd expect from energy that was active in a fast-moving train. My guess is, if we went into that same underground tunnel, we'd feel streaks of the same faint energy because it went flying through the air, almost, when Linnea was taken."

"And it's that same thing we both felt in Amanda Finneran's flat? How did you describe it? Scratching at reality?"

"Yeah," he confirmed. "The same."

"So, whatever is causing it comes from the abductor," she said. Then she shook her head. "But we already knew that, because the TARDIS isolated the energy signature as having come from the Phlotigo. What I mean is…"

"The Phlotigo folks are not in a position to dowse the women with magnetic energy," the Doctor said.

"That was a possibility?"

"Yeah, that's what I meant when I said it wasn't something the women were carrying around with them. I've seen it before, done with Huon particles," he explained. "A woman… a bride, in fact. Over time, she'd been fed this one type of energy, and it caused her to be sort of _extracted_ from her own wedding. But that's neither here nor there, because this isn't the same."

"Right. They're just leaving their energy signature behind at the moment when they're taking the women."

"Yes. The question is, if they're not dowsing the women with a counter energy, which they're not, then _how_ are they choosing them? How do they even know that these individuals exist? How are they isolating them? How are they _taking_ them?"

"And shouldn't it be even more difficult to do something like that across realities, right? I mean, you said it might be from the void, or across the void?"

"Good point, you can't just teleport people across universes. Believe me, I've tried." He sighed, stopping in his tracks. He tugged at the hair on the top of his head. "Blimey, what the hell is this, Martha?"

"I don't know," she shrugged. "I don't know all the rules yet, I can just feel them changing."

He smiled. "You've still got six months to go. You'll get there."

"Yeah, and then I'll have to give it all up. Like _Flowers For Algernon."_

"Trust me, there are days when I'd give a lot pass this uber-awareness off to someone else. And not just share it with you, but give it away, you know?"

Martha thought about the tortured, isolated ultimate destiny of their son. "That doesn't actually help, Doctor."

"Sorry."

* * *

><p>The Doctor was in the console room, trying to take readings from the void, seeing if any activity or energy had come from it recently. He tried to cross-reference Phlotigo energy with void energy, with unauthorised time-hopping traces in the early 21st century (even though he and Martha had agreed that the Phlotigo signature wasn't coming from across time, or they'd know it), but he found nothing. The void was sealed off, he'd seen to that himself, and he was detecting no leaks, anywhere in the vicinity of Earth, anywhere close to this time period.<p>

"Anything?" asked Martha, wandering in. She'd spent the last fifteen minutes knocking about in the newly-painted, and newly-ventilated nursery, imagining where the crib would go when it came, and the dresser and changing table. It was too early to feel anything particularly visceral about it, but she began the process of bonding with the room, as she thought of it. It would be the place where she would spend the first quality hours with her child, where she would learn to rock him to sleep, where he would learn the feel of her arms and how to depend on, and interact with, his parents. She ran her hands over the paint, knowing that these would be the first colours her son would remember, and where they chose to put the furniture would be forever imprinted on his early memory. She wondered if she should get some Feng Shui books, just to be on the safe side.

"No," the Doctor answered with resignation, sitting down. "Everything, as far as I can tell, is closed off. And no departures from the Phlotigo Galaxy have been reported recently… although it could be a being who left long ago, I suppose. What about you?"

"Do you think we chose the right colours?"

"For the nursery?"

"Yeah. I mean, really."

The Doctor's chin fell to his chest, and his shoulders slumped. "Are we really going to do this again?"

"Well…"

"Martha, it's beige and blue," he said.

"But there are a lot of different _kinds_ of beige and blue."

"No, there aren't. Not to a newborn. It's wonderful, just leave it alone. You're obsessing again."

"Yeah, I guess," Martha conceded. "Sorry. I guess it's just in our blood."

"Whose?"

"I don't know. Women. Women with a big thing on the horizon. Women in the west, who have been trained to think they have nothing else more important to worry about, even if they know differently," she mused, looking up into the time rotor, all the while thinking, knowing she _did _have more important things in her life than paint. "But it's all got to be colours with stupid names, and the perfect cake flavour, and matching furniture, lilies or roses, upholstery, the perfect shoes, receiving blankets and bedclothes with a _theme_… when really, it shouldn't matter."

The Doctor was quiet for a few moments, watching her. At last he stood up and reached out, pulling her in.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing, why?"

"You were all cute and anal-retentive, and then suddenly, your voice was trailing off and you were… ruminating."

She squirmed away from him, and he stepped back against the console, and crossed his arms to listen.

"Well, sometimes I feel like letting go of all this rubbish. It's like last week with Tish," Martha told him. "She's all into the little things that mean nothing. Like I said, the flowers, the cake, the _precise_ right colour so that the bridesmaid's dresses match the napkins and tablecloths and the ribbons around the little party favours. Who cares? She and Robert Oliver, they love each other and want to spend their lives together, so _who cares_? If they want to throw a party, that's great, but the thing that matters is in their hearts. She's making it seem like the marriage will collapse if she doesn't have a bloody chocolate fountain!"

"I told you not to go with her to that cake tasting," he said. "All it did was make you sick, and make you ranty."

"Yeah, well, apparently the baby doesn't like carrot cake."

"Who can blame him?"

"But, of course, it's not just Tish, Doctor. I mean, look at me. You and I, we save people and planets and hold things together, sometimes when no one else in existence can. And we have so much love, and we're about to bring a baby into that. But I'm insisting that he has a mahogany crib and changing table, and that his walls are Safari Tan and Midnight Shine, rather than Khaki Crème and Caribbean Dawn. Or just beige and blue! You would think that I'd have bigger fish to fry. You would think that the fact that we can provide a loving home and a place for our son to lay his head would be enough."

She leaned against the console beside him.

"I'm sorry," he said, putting his arm around her. He kissed her forehead. "I shouldn't have said anything."

"I'm the one who brought it up," she sighed. She rested her head against him.

"I should have just let you obsess if you wanted."

"About what? See? I've forgotten already."

The Doctor smiled. "Good. The devil is in the details," he said.

"The details."

"Yeah, the details."

"No, I mean…" she pulled away from him again, and turned to stare at him, eyes wide and intense. "The details! We've got to find out the details of these girls' weddings!"

"What?"

"You know, the flowers, the colours, the cake, the caterers… everything."

"Okay."

"You asked how this Phlotigo entity knows them. You asked how they're being isolated. There's no Phlotigo signature anywhere in the air, except, so far, the locales from which the women have disappeared. And they disappeared from totally different places, so there has to be some other link, some other way that the Phlotigo are getting in touch with them, as it were. Maybe if we could find that out, we'd find a stronger signature somewhere, and we could isolate it to a particular planet in that galaxy, or maybe better…"

"Well," he said, surprised. "For someone who doesn't know the rules, you're certainly all over them!"

"Both of those girls were getting married soon," she insisted. "They have to have _something_ more specific in common."


	6. Chapter 6

FOUR MONTHS AND TEN DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING

Early Wednesday afternoon in the console room, after a long morning of separate inquiries with the families and bridal parties of Amanda Finneran and Linnea Mays, the Doctor and Martha stared at each other.

"That's it? Really?" asked Martha.

"That's it. Florists, caterers, bridesmaid dresses, officiants, registries, china patterns, cakes… this is the only link," he confirmed.

"Audacious Attire," Martha mused, staring at two pieces of paper with interview notes scribbled on, one in her own handwriting, the other in the Doctor's.

"So," said the Doctor, his voice low and ominous. "Do we tell her?"

"Who?"

"Tish!"

"Tell her what?" asked Martha. Suddenly she grew very animated. "'Er, Tish, we have bad news. Two women who have bought dresses from the same shop as you have disappeared. What's that got to do with you, you ask? Well, good question, that. The truth is, we're afraid something dreadful will happen to you now, as well. Yes, Tish, based solely on where you bought your wedding gown. How do we know, you ask? Well, the Doctor and I – who, by the way, stand by the image we've tried so hard to project as a relatively normal couple – we are tuned into the workings of time and the universe, and we don't believe this is a coincidence. No, no, I haven't always had this ability; the Doctor is an alien, and passed it along when he impregnated me with our predestined hybrid love child who will save multitudes of planets from a vicious plague. But yeah, we're both totally normal. Oh, and please don't have us committed, or more will die!'" She had raised her voice to a comically loud, frantically sarcastic level.

He stared at her incredulously for a few moments. "Well, when you put it that way, it does sound daft."

She laughed, and threw up her hands. "Well, that's what our life sounds like to other people! Come on, Doctor, you've been doing this a lot longer than I have! I know you know the dilemma this poses."

"Okay, so we _don't_ tell her."

"Thing is," Martha said, biting her thumb nail. "I got a bad vibe from that shop. And not just from the shop, from the shopkeeper."

"Really? Why?"

"I can't put my finger on it," she told him. "Maybe you could. It was just _odd_ somehow."

"Scratching-at-reality odd?"

"Maybe. Hard to say. It was before I'd been to the Finnerans' flat with you, or thought about the concept of energy scratching at reality. It was just a gut feeling that I'm inheriting from you and your offspring here," she said, pointing to her stomach. "Which has never been highly refined. At least not in these matters."

"You got a wonky feeling from the dress shop, and two women have disappeared, who own wedding gowns from there. We tell Tish."

Martha began to pace. "But, you know, I called there about a week and a half ago, and the creepy woman was really nice. Still a little weird-sounding, but I didn't get anything officially _off_. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions."

"So you're saying, we wait for more information before we tell Tish."

"But, that shop, they were sending e-mails by the barrelful," Martha said, still pacing. "Tish said she had twenty-eight new e-mails from them, all linking to some bridal special or event or bargain somewhere. Ads for caterers and florists and whatnot."

"So?"

"_Twenty eight_ e-mails, all in one day?"

"It's annoying, but not evil," the Doctor offered.

"It feels predatory somehow," Martha told him, shuddering.

"Predatory?"

"Yes! And then there's this thing that the shopkeeper woman said. She said that Tish's excitement was _good for her_, then she sort of back-pedaled and said it was good for us all, or something like that. It was so awkward, and… how could Tish's excitement be _good for her_?"

"Good for Tish?"

"No, good for Fiona, the shop lady!"

"Well, it keeps business going, doesn't it? Helps the economy…"

"It's creepy, Doctor. Again, it's predatory, like she's rubbing her hands together and licking her chops."

"So now you've revoked your benefit-of-the-doubt position, and are back to your, the-lady-is-bad-juju position."

"Yes. Well, no. Maybe." She bit her thumb nail again.

The Doctor closed his eyes and sighed, as if trying to cushion a blow to the back of the head. He opened his eyes and moved to stop Martha pacing. "Okay, here it is," he said, his hands on her shoulders. "I'm making the executive decision here. We check out the dress shop before we say anything that might alarm Tish. If we find something suspicious, we'll let her know. Sound good?"

* * *

><p>"Good afternoon," Fiona Hart said as the travellers entered her shop.<p>

"Hi," said the Doctor whimsically. "Lovely day."

"Yes," answered Miss Hart absently. She was staring at Martha. This was not lost on the Doctor, who looked at Martha then, and then back at Miss Hart. She seemed to realise then that she was being rude. "Sorry, I'm staring. It's just… well, you look a little familiar."

"I'm Tish Jones' sister," Martha said. "We were here about a month ago."

"Ah yes, I remember. So," she said smiling a tight smile, and crossing the room. "Am I to understand that there's another wedding in the works?" Her eyes darted back and forth between the Doctor and Martha, though her expression had gone dead serious. They both felt that if they said no, she would either explode, or turn into a daemon.

"Er, yeah," Martha answered, since she couldn't come up with any other reason why they would be there.

"Did you have something in mind from the website?" Still too serious for a woman trying to sell a dress for the happiest occasion of a young woman's life.

"No, I'm just getting started now."

"All right then. Let me just take your measurements, and we can see what we have that will work for you," Miss Hart said, taking a tape measure from her frumpy blue pocket. Martha put her arms up to make her body into a T shape, and the mysterious shopkeeper wrapped the tape around her bust, then made a note. Then she did Martha's waist. As she did, she asked, "So, is there any particular era of gown that you're interested in? We carry 1979 and earlier."

"Oh, no," Martha mused. "Just… looking for ideas."

Fiona Hart looked pointedly at the Doctor. "And you will be helping her with this process?"

He was blindsided by the question. He tugged at his earlobe and looked, once again, back and forth at Martha and Miss Hart, his mouth open and surprised. "I… yeah, maybe. I mean, I'll be _around_. Is that a problem?"

"No, not a problem," Fiona insisted awkwardly. Martha noticed once again the mousy quality that had caught her eye before, and had made her wonder why this owner of Audacious Attire was so not-audacious herself. "It's just… well… how modern." The tight smile had returned. It was clear that she disapproved of the Doctor being there.

"Brilliant," he exclaimed. "I like modern."

"Right this way Miss Jones," Fiona said, taking Martha's hand a little too roughly for comfort. "Soon to be Mrs…?"

Martha looked back at the Doctor as she was dragged across the store. The unhelpful Time Lord shrugged, smirked and waved at her. After that, he slipped off to another part of the store to explore.

"I'm keeping my name," Martha told Miss Hart.

"I see. Very wise. One never knows, does one?"

"One never knows what?" Martha asked.

Miss Hart began to rifle earnestly through a rack of dresses, approximately in Martha's size. "Oh, just when you'll have to change back, or dissociate…" she looked at Martha suddenly with wide, intense eyes. "Sorry. I didn't mean that. I just think it's wise for a woman to remain who she is."

"Okay," Martha conceded. What kind of a salesperson who sells wedding gowns makes off-handed comments about divorce and becoming dissociated from one's husband?

* * *

><p>The Doctor watched the admittedly odd shopkeeper drag Martha off to choose, of all things, a wedding dress. It hadn't been their plan that Martha would distract her while he checked the place out, but once it started happening, it seemed to make sense. He made a beeline toward the door, a red curtain strung across it, a sign to the side designating it for <em>Employees Only.<em>

He wasn't getting a strange vibe from the place particularly, and Fiona Hart just seemed awkward and a little brash. Truth be told, he wondered why she didn't have some sort of associate working there, actually dealing with customers. When she had looked the Doctor in the eye to express her displeasure at him helping his "bride-to-be" find a dress, he'd got a chill, like when someone's grumpy grandmother catches you with your hand in the biscuit tin. But that was just the harsh look in her beady eyes, not anything that really indicated trouble. He reckoned that perhaps Martha was mistaking her regular old feminine intuition (and native smarts) with Time Lord-like sensibilities. It was an easy mistake; the Doctor had been known to mix up his radar signals from time to time as well.

Since he hadn't got any other clues telling him where to look for weirdness in the shop, he decided to begin with the technology. He had noticed security cameras when they'd entered the store. He hoped they weren't dummies, and assumed that the CPU which held the footage would be hidden in the back, with the rest of Fiona Hart's stock.

He located it in a corner, straight ahead. It was a black box with three green lights glowing, sitting sideways between two wooden beams, as the whole stock room was unfinished, including the ceiling. An old leather-chair sat discarded nearby. He pulled it toward him and stepped up, aiming the sonic at the device. A quick scan told him that nothing was amiss with the camera system, but the good news was that that meant there was footage to be looked over. He picked up the black box and began to search for a way to open it up.

He'd got so wrapped up in his work, he hadn't noticed Fiona Hart's voice getting louder. Suddenly, it was just on the other side of the red curtain. She was saying, "Don't worry, Miss Jones, I have some shoes that will go with that. What did you say your size was?"

He heard Martha answer, "Four, four and a half."

Miss Hart must have stopped just outside the curtain to turn and ask Martha the question, because otherwise he'd have been caught. The way he saw it, he had about a second and a half to spare.

He hopped down quietly from the chair, glad once again that he always wore trainers, and dove behind two shelves stacked to the ceiling with what he now realised were shoe boxes. He silently swore, and hoped that the shoes she'd be looking for were on the front side, and that she wouldn't have to come round behind.

"It's okay, it's not necessary, Miss Hart," he heard Martha cry out. "Really, you don't have to go to that trouble."

The tone of Martha's voice told the Doctor she'd seen him go back there, and she was desperately trying to get Miss Hart to stay out.

"No trouble," Miss Hart said, not sounding very sincere. She threw the curtain aside, and stopped in front of the great panel of shoes. The Doctor concealed himself behind a solid stack, no risk of shoe box holes to reveal his presence.

"Let's see… Pretty in Pearl, Pretty in Pearl, Pretty in Pearl…" she muttered.

The Doctor could see from his side that one of the shoe model names was, indeed, Pretty in Pearl. A quick glance told him that there were no Pretty in Pearls in size four, nor four and a half, on Fiona's side. This would undoubtedly make her come round…

He looked quickly at the other stack, the one on his left. There it was: Pretty in Pearl, size four. He grabbed it silently, and pushed it through to her side, when he was sure she wasn't looking. He even shoved it about an inch further than the rest of the boxes, so she'd be sure to see it.

"Oh, there it is," she said to herself. She took the box the Doctor had planted, and went back through the red curtain.

The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief. He'd reckoned that Miss Hart was just an odd human being, but it occurred to him that if he was wrong, if she _was_ an evil being or an alien or someone with special powers or a sixth sense of some sort, what he had just done was incredibly stupid. She might have been able to sense him, especially after she'd spotted the shoe box that hadn't been there before. He wondered if he'd have been better off just getting caught and _talking_ his way out of it. He was mighty good at that.

He heard Martha say that the shoes were perfect, but now she'd like to look at more dresses. She was buying him time. He smiled, proud, as always, of her ingenuity. Though he was secretly a little disappointed that he wouldn't get to see her in any of the gowns.

He moved back toward the black box. This time, he took in his surroundings a bit. Beyond the second stack of shoes, to his left, he saw an office, complete with files, dossiers and, of course, a computer. He decided to discard the idea of the camera footage for a moment.

A glance over the papers strewn about showed him what he suspected: receipts, bills of sale, customer records – everything you'd expect from a dress shop. It looked as though she was in the process of scanning them into digital files. So, he moved the mouse slightly on the computer, and the screen saver went away. He clicked on the desktop icon labelled, "Transactions."

He quickly unscrewed a whole side of the CPU and began copying the transaction files directly from the circuit board to be stored in the sonic, to perhaps be perused later. He'd planned to do the same thing with the security camera footage. But his trusted instrument made a pained noise.

He stopped it buzzing for a moment, and pointed it at the wall, then tried again. The normal sound came out. He tried once more pointing it at the circuit board, and once again, a sickly, weak slow buzzing came forth. He checked the files he was copying – they weren't encrypted or blocked in any way.

Which could only mean one thing. This computer had been tampered with. And not by a standard-issue hacker or virus or government spyware. It was something else entirely. But what? And what, if anything, did it have to do with the Phlotigo Galaxy? And how much of it was Miss Hart responsible for?

He put the the panel back onto the side of the CPU, and shoved the sonic back in his pocket. He stared at the CPU. "How am I supposed to get you alone to examine you?" he asked it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Okay, some more Jones family combat fodder... a lot of dialogue, a lot of "nothing" happening. Except there are a couple of new revelations. Remember when Martha said Leo wasn't as daft as he looked?**

* * *

><p><span>FOUR MONTHS BEFORE THE WEDDING<span>

Leo Jones paced uncomfortably in front of the agreed-upon entrance to Debenham's department store.

"What are you doing here?" Martha asked, smiling widely, in disbelief. She had come up behind him and startled him a little.

He sighed. "Mum thinks I haven't been involved enough. So I'm here."

She scoffed. "But you're a bloke. Can't you just go have a beer with Robert Oliver? Start planning a highly inappropriate stag party?"

He piped up, and his voice came out louder than necessary. "See? That's what I said! The men aren't supposed to be a part of this!"

Martha laughed. "Well, I'm glad you're here. I haven't seen you in a while. What have you been up to?"

"No, no," he said, wagging his finger. "You first."

"Well, since you've got that look on your face, you must already know," she said, punching him on the shoulder.

He gave a mischievous laugh. "Yeah, maybe," he conceded. "Congratulations."

"Thank you," she said with a warm smile as he gave her a hug. A simple_ congratulations_ from her brother was a nice change from Tish's excited buzzing in the restaurant and her mother's inquisitorial concern.

"If you find out it's a girl and you need any stuff… just ask. And we ain't having another one."

"I'll keep it in mind, thanks," she answered. _She _knew she wasn't going to have a girl, of course, but technically, it was too early in the pregnancy for anyone other than a time traveller to know that.

"I heard mum went mental."

"She does that sometimes."

"That's so weird. She didn't go mental when _we_ got pregnant, and we weren't married either. Plus, I'm younger than you."

"I really don't think it's any of the _practical _things bothering her. It's the other party involved," Martha told her brother, rolling her eyes. "You know she's not a big fan."

"What, the Doctor? Still? Blimey. What's the problem? He seems like a nice guy."

"He is!" Martha shouted, more shrilly than she had intended.

"And clever. Saved our lives. Looks good in a tux. What's not to like?"

She smiled. "Leo, you're preaching to the choir. I already like him quite a lot, I don't need any convincing."

"She'll come round," Leo assured her, patting her on the shoulder.

"That's what everyone's been saying. Even mum. I guess I have to believe it."

"Oi, you two," Tish said, surprising them both. Once again, she had arrived with their friend Dana. "Shhh." She tossed her head to the side, indicating that Francine was coming up the sidewalk. Though she was talking on the phone, and preoccupied.

Leo and Dana exchanged hellos, and made small talk. Eventually, Francine ended the phone call, though continued to surf through her phone's apps, for some unknown thing.

"Hi kids," she said absently. "Sorry. Crisis at work. Be with you in a moment."

"Let's just go in, shall we?" Tish suggested.

The party of five went directly to the bridal registry counter, and signed Tish and Robert Oliver up for a gift wish list. The chipper salesperson gave Tish a sku gun, and showed her how to use it, how to delete items and put in quantities.

First, they attacked the china patterns.

Leo suggested several patterns with a smirk, ones that even _he _knew no modern bride outside of perhaps rural Romania, or under the age of eighty, would fancy. Martha quite liked the big loopy Art-Deco patterns, which she later realised looked a lot like Gallifreyan lettering, something she was now tuned in to, more than ever. Dana was a traditionalist, and suggested Tish look at the pink flowery ones, patterns with little birds.

Tish chose a surprising French Provincial pattern, in red and yellow. It wasn't something Martha would have chosen, but it wasn't _her_ bridal registry. Tish shot the barcodes for the set of sixteen plates, saucers, teacups and matching silverware and napkins. She also chose two large serving platters and a teapot.

Francine continued to pay more attention to her Smartphone than to the china.

Next, they went for the kitchen gadgets.

"Do I really need a salad shooter?" asked Tish.

"No-one _needs_ a salad shooter, Tish. But that's what this whole registry thing is all about," Dana explained.

Leo provided the commentary on unneeded kitchen items and why the hell anyone would want them, while Dana guided Tish through the thought process of choosing things she _wanted_, expensive or not, but also adding a few affordable things to the list, to accommodate guest who were not able or inclined to spend very much. Martha just watched, wondering, like Leo, if anyone really needs a freezer-proof shrink-wrapping machine.

Francine continued to shuffle about with her phone.

Finally, when they were getting ready to leave the kitchen gadgets department and go toward home accents, Tish asked, "Mum, what is this crisis? Are you solving the international budget crunch? Launching cosmonauts, what?"

"I'm sorry, sweetheart, I just… ugh!" Francine shouted. The sentence had started out well, and had ended with another distraction from work.

Tish pulled her own iPhone from her handbag. She dialled. Francine's phone rang in her hand. She answered it. "Francine Jones."

"Hi! It's Tish. Your daughter."

"Sweetie…"

"I'm er, currently at Debenham's doing my registry. Martha and Leo and Dana are here. So where are you, and when will you be here?"

"Very cheeky," Francine said, ending the call. Tish did the same.

"If you've got a crisis, go deal with it. _That_ I would understand. _This_ is just stupid," Tish said, gesturing toward the electronic thing in her mother's hand. "You're here, but what good is it?"

"I promise, five more minutes," Francine insisted.

"No, mum," Tish said. "It's already been half an hour. Just go. It's okay. I'm not mad, I promise."

Francine sighed, and looked at all of her kids, and Dana, with worry. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. In fact, I insist. Look, I have lots of help here. We can manage without you."

"I'm sorry, Tish. Come round for tea, okay? Tell me _everything_."

"I will. I'll see you later." Tish seemed happier as she kissed her mother goodbye and Francine rushed out of the store.

As she went to turn off her phone, she hit the wrong button by accident. "Bollocks. Whoa, wait. They sent me fifty-two e-mails today!"

"Who's they?" asked Dana.

"Audacious Attire!" Tish exclaimed. "They've been pretty e-mail happy lately, but this is a new record!"

"They have?" Martha shouted.

Tish looked at her with a quizzical expression. "Yes. I told you about it when we had the dress altered, remember?"

"But I… give me that," Martha snapped, snatching the iPhone from her sister's hand.

Tish and Dana looked at each other and shrugged.

"This is… oh, this is not good, Tish," Martha insisted, scrolling through. "That place…"

Tish waited for her to say something. "What?"

"I don't like this," Martha told her, trying to seem casual, and not succeeding.

"I know. Thank heaven it's not you who has to put up with it," Tish said, frowning.

"I'm deleting these." Martha had _announced _this; she didn't ask. "You don't need this in your life."

"No, you are _not _deleting them," Tish shouted, taking her phone out of Martha's hand. "Blimey. What is your problem lately? You didn't like that store, you didn't like the store owner, and now you don't like their e-mails. Is it the pregnancy causing this? Some kind of anti-bridal-shop hormone I don't know about?"

"Yes, Tish, it's a hormone," Martha shot back sarcastically. "It causes me to hate everything you do."

Tish's jaw dropped, and Martha immediately regretted her words. She guessed she _might_ just be a little hormonal at the moment.

"That is _not_ what I said, Martha," Tish said, pointing one finger mildly at her sister.

"I wish you would just trust me on this!" Martha shouted.

"Okay, ladies…" Dana tried.

"On what?" Tish wanted to know.

"There are things you don't understand! That place is _bad_, Tish. There's something about it. I can't… I can't really explain it right now, but… we've been doing some… reconnaissance. And it's not right. I think you should just cut all ties with that bridal shop."

"What?" Even Leo was in the argument now. "Reconnaissance? Seriously?"

"Reconnaissance?" Tish echoed. "You've been checking up on my bridal shop? That's bloody insane! How about the florists I've been looking at? Any of them have a criminal past? Any of the cake shop owners done time for poisoning?"

"Okay, okay, people are starting to stare," Dana said, getting between them. She smiled amicably at Martha. "You know what? I've been through this whole bridal registry thing before – I think Tish and I can finish this up. Besides, you said you wanted to take the lead on the bridal shower, right? Why don't you and Leo just let me take this one, yeah?"

Martha and Leo looked at each other. He shrugged. "Yeah, I think that's a good idea," Martha said. "I think there are too many cooks here anyway."

"Want to go get some coffee?" asked Leo.

"Yeah, nice," Martha conceded. "Tish, I'm sorry. But, I really do want to talk to you about this. Rationally. No shouting, I promise."

"Later," Tish said.

"Yeah, later. And… please try to get them to stop sending you those e-mails."

"Martha…"

"We're leaving, we're leaving," Martha insisted, taking her brother's arm.

* * *

><p>Martha sat down at a tiny table across from Leo with a decaf lattè. She laughed to herself at how her baby brother, at six feet tall, two hundred pounds, did not really fit in the cute little café chair. And how, he was twenty-one years old, a father and a tax-payer, but he still couldn't handle a proper cup of coffee or tea. He sat, drinking chocolate milk and eating a biscotti.<p>

"So, you never did tell me what you're up to," she pointed out.

"Oh," he sighed. "Nothing much. I go to work, come home, bathe the baby, then do it all over again."

"Doesn't sound so bad," Martha told him.

"Well, not the baby part," he said with a little smile. "But the rest is bloody mind-numbing."

"Maybe it's time to get back to school."

"You sound like mum."

"Sorry."

"Not that she doesn't have a point," Leo admitted.

"Well, if you're bored," Martha shrugged. "Consider something new. What was that dream you had when you were a kid?"

"To be a Transformer? I don't think there's a university that specialises in that."

"No, the other one," Martha laughed. "When you were just a little older."

"Oh, that," he said.

"Yeah, that."

"I don't have the time to devote to law school, Martha," he told her. "You'll understand when your little one comes. It'll be a while before you'll be able to get back to med school, trust me."

"I know. But it doesn't mean you can't start taking the steps. Baby steps. You have to get through university first, anyway. Maybe by the time you do that, Keshia will be a little older."

"Yeah," Leo said to her, in a way that let her know that he'd thought about it before, but it sounded positively daunting to him. She couldn't blame him for that.

"But, in the short-term," she said. "Aren't you doing anything fun to mix things up? What happened to your football league?"

"Gave it up when the baby was born," he chuckled.

"Okay, what about taking one of those daddy-and-me swimming classes with her?"

"That's a good idea," he said.

"Maybe you'd meet some other dads you could hang out with," she suggested. "You could watch sports and talk about politics, or whatever you do, and your kids could play on the swings."

He nodded, smiling slightly. "Not bad, Martha." He took a swig of his milk. "So, speaking of vocational changes…"

He tilted his head sideways and waited her for her to comment.

"What?" She had no idea what he was asking for.

"Reconnaissance?"

"What about it?"

Leo sighed. "You and your Doctor have been doing reconnaissance? Shouldn't you be… doctoring?"

"Well, we do a little of that, too," she said sheepishly, looking away.

"The Doctor isn't a doctor is he? It's some secret gumshoe nickname he uses," Leo declared confidently, leaning back, crossing his arms. "It's why he won't ever tell us his name. He's afraid of the law, or of bounty hunters or something."

"Leo, what are you on about?" Martha asked. Though, she did get an unpleasantly warm sensation crawling up her spine.

"Come off it, Martha," he teased, with a smile. "A man I've never seen before turns up at a party with my sister, and then somehow thwarts an alien beast that comes out of a magic machine that makes people young again?"

"Exactly. Biology. He's a doctor."

_Lame_, she said to herself. Not even _she_ believed her own words now.

"Skulking about in the labs upstairs, just _asking_ to be arrested? Chasing Tish down, the two of you telling her not to snog that Lazarus bloke? That government guy telling mum he's dangerous? Running around with that remote control thingy of his?"

"It's a screwdriver," she muttered.

"Whatever," he shrugged. "I still say he's not a doctor."

Martha looked her brother directly in the eye, and clenched her lips shut tightly. This signified, as Leo knew, that she meant business. "He is a doctor," said Martha. "And an investigator."

"I knew it!" Leo exclaimed, clapping once.

"But that's all you get," she told him quickly. "It's way more complicated than that, but that's still all you get. All right?"

"All right," he conceded, in a disarmed position. "I get it."

"And you can't tell anyone, especially mum," Martha insisted.

"Who else would care?"

"Lots of people. Just keep your mouth shut, all right?"

"All right."

Suddenly, her eyes shifted to the left, and went absent for a moment. Her mouth went slack. He turned to see what she was looking at, but it wasn't anything special – just a wall.

"What?" he asked.

"You're bored? You want something interesting to do this weekend?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Give me a minute," she said, digging her phone out of her pocket and hitting the speed-dial.

"What is this?" he asked, chuckling.

She shushed him as she brought the phone to her ear. "Doctor?" she said. "I've just got a fabulous idea."


	8. Chapter 8

THREE MONTHS AND THREE WEEKS BEFORE THE WEDDING

"Hi," Martha said sheepishly, sitting down at a little table across from her sister.

"Hello," Tish replied.

Martha was surprised to hear that she wasn't displaying much anger in her voice. "You sound like you're in a pretty good mood."

"I am," Tish said. She held up a fruity cocktail. "This doesn't hurt." She took a sip.

Martha decided to forego commenting that perhaps her sister shouldn't be drinking at noon, and instead, just sighed. "I'm sorry about last week at Debenham's."

"I know you are. And it's okay."

"It is?"

"Yeah, I get it."

"You do?"

"Of course." Tish gave her a sympathetic smile.

Martha's stomach did a flip. She didn't know if it was nervousness or anger, or perhaps Baby's First Somersault. "Oh," she said, smiling bitterly. "You think it's hormones."

"Isn't it?"

"Partly," Martha agreed. "I'm usually not prone to flying off the handle _quite_ so quickly."

"Right."

"But the other stuff, the stuff I said we needed to talk about…"

"The dress shop rubbish? Oh, Martha," Tish sighed. "Can't we just let this go?"

"No," Martha insisted. "We can't. You agreed to come here to talk about this, so now you're going to listen."

Tish crossed her arms across her chest. She stared into space for a moment, then focused on her sister's face. "Fine. You said there are things I don't understand." As she said the last three words, she used sceptical air-quotes. Martha decided to ignore them.

"Yes, there are things you don't understand."

"What, like organised crime?"

"No, a lot weirder than that. Just hear me out."

Tish motioned for Martha to speak, though scepticism showed all over her face.

"Two women have gone missing, Tish," Martha began. "Two, in the past month, that we know of. Both of them right before their weddings, and the only link we can find is Audacious Attire. And we don't know if they're dead or alive, being held prisoner somewhere, or whether they just ran off, but the circumstances surrounding the disppearances… it's very, very strange. It's like a… disturbance."

"Disturbance?"

"Yes. In the air."

"Like ions or something?"

"Something like that. We're… looking into it."

"We, meaning you and the Doctor."

Martha blinked. "Yes, of course."

Tish rolled her eyes. "Okay. Continue, please."

"Why are you rolling your eyes?"

"Because, do you know how daft this all sounds?"

"I know, but… Tish, the Doctor and I… we're…" Martha sighed, knowing she'd backed herself into a bit of a corner. "He's not exactly what you'd call an M.D. I mean, not exclusively anyway."

"I worked that out, thanks," Tish said, her face registering tedium.

"You did?" Martha asked. Then she let out a breath and relaxed. "Of course you did."

"Yep. He's got to be some kind of underground operative, at least," Tish guessed. "How many nephrologists would know how to deal with Lazarus and his machine? And all that rubbish that the government keeps whispering in mum's ear…"

"Still?"

"Well, not so much now. She's basically quit listening and developed her own neuroses."

Martha reckoned this was a good way for Tish to think of it for now. The Doctor is an underground operative. It was a vague version of what he actually was, much as Leo thought of him as an _investigator_.

"Okay," Martha nodded. "You're basically right. Basically."

"What I don't get is how _you_ fit into the equation. I mean, other than the shagging."

Martha's nervous angry stomach did another flip. "It's hard to explain."

"I'll bet." Sarcasm betrayed itself in Tish's voice.

"Tish, do you have something to say?" Martha asked. She tried not to sound defensive, but she was more than a little hurt, and she didn't mind if Tish knew it. She had always believed that Tish was on her side, where her relationship with the Doctor was concerned. She'd defended Martha to their mother, she'd tagged along with her and the Doctor when Lazarus ran amok. She'd sent Martha e-mails trying to reassure her that everything would be okay with Francine and the baby. And ultimately, Martha knew, Tish would wind up raising her and the Doctor's child, at least for a time. "I thought you were okay with all this. What's the problem?"

"The problem is," Tish whispered with a hiss, leaning forward. "Martha, I've been more than fair. I've gone to bat for you. I've supported you. I've done everything I can for you, and still, there's this secrecy. Clearly, your Doctor is not who or what he appears to be. He's not just _handsome and worldly_, he's something else entirely… like, in the way James Bond is something else. Maybe even weirder than that. And you won't say. You keep me in the dark. You treat me like a child when the subject comes up, and I just can't imagine what the two of you could be hiding. At first I thought _you _didn't know either, but know I know better!"

"Tish…"

"I don't understand how you fit into his life, or him into yours, and I don't understand why you feel you can't trust me with the truth. Martha, it's me! I'm your sister! I've told you _everything _since we were old enough to talk, and until recently, I think, vice versa. And I'm sorry, I don't want to sound like mum, but I have to admit, the secrecy makes me just a little nervous."

"Tish, listen…"

"Martha, don't get me wrong. I like the Doctor. I do. He's a laugh, he really is. And I think he honestly loves you – I can see it in his eyes when he looks at you. And I believe you know what you're doing. Just… _what is it _that you're doing?"

Now it was Martha's turn to sit back and cross her arms. She exhaled through pursed lips.

Tish's lips curled. "You're going to tell me _again_ that you can't tell me."

Tears came to Martha's eyes. "I'm afraid that if I tell you the truth, you'll… I don't know."

"What? Hate you? Have you arrested? Tell mum on you?"

"Have me committed," Martha said, a single tear spilling over. "Or worse: think I'm lying and trust me even less than you do now."

"I see. So the truth is so strange, I won't believe it, or even be able to wrap my mind round it long enough just to give you the benefit of the doubt."

Martha stared at her sister through her tears, as a few more fell. "Maybe," she confessed, knowing that Tish would feel insulted.

And she did. Tish felt exasperated to the extreme. She threw up her hands. "How about… just start with one thing. Just _one_ oh-so-outlandish little detail. Just try me. Give me a little credit. Just… show _some_ measure of trust, Martha, so that at least _someone_ in the family has a sense of the score."

Martha took a deep breath. She thought about the Doctor. She thought about the unbelievable and fantastical aspects of their daily lives. She thought about how _big_ the outlandish details really were, and wondered if there was anything she could say right now that _wouldn't_ completely turn her relationship with her sister inside-out, one way or another.

And as she had many times over the past year, she thought "What would the Doctor do?" If he was sitting here now, what would he say to Tish? What detail, if any, would he give? And what would he say later on when Martha told him about this conversation, and whatever tidbit she'd decided to disclose?

He'd likely not approve of any of it.

But they were part of each others' lives now. They shared a life, a love, a bed, and now flesh and blood. When two people get involved and become intertwined, certain privacies had to be relinquished if they wanted to be truly, truly together. The Doctor would just have to get used to that. Martha felt she was ready to bear a cold shoulder from him, if that's what it took. She knew he'd come round eventually, and deep down, he would understand. Besides, Tish was going to care for their son, who would share much of the uniqueness that made the Doctor such an infuriating and enigmatic being.

And Martha made a decision.

"I'll tell you the truth," she said almost robotically. "I will tell you anything you want to know, and I will not lie to you. I promise."

"Good, thank you."

"But you have to make me a promise as well."

"Okay."

"Promise me that you will honour _my _promise, by believing in me."

Tish was surprised. "Okay," she said, frowning.

"Promise that you will believe that I am completely sane, and that I have not been manipulated by anyone."

Tish's frown deepened. "Okay."

"Because after we have this talk, I don't want to have to spend the next six months chasing you about, trying to convince you."

"Er… okay."

Martha took yet another deep breath. "Okay. Do you believe in life outside of this planet?"

"You mean, aliens?"

"Yes."

Tish gave a slow, deep shrug. "Well, I think the idea that we are alone in this _entire_ huge, vast universe is unlikely."

"So, yes?"

"Yes," Tish replied, still deeply frowning. "I think there must be life out there."

"Good. Do you believe that non-humans might walk among us?"

Tish opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out for a few seconds. Her eyes grew wide, and she said, "I'd never thought about it, but I couldn't swear that they _don't_ walk among us."

"Could you believe that some of them wear suits, speak with English accents, fall in love with humans, and may even appear to be _handsome and worldly_?"

Again, Tish opened her mouth, and nothing came out. This time, she never found the wherewithal to speak. Her eyes were impossible to read, and Martha's stomach did twenty flips all at once.

* * *

><p>Across town, Audacious Attire was closed for inventory. Fiona Hart was expecting a delivery at any moment. For now, she was going through her receipts for the past month, and reconciling them with bank statements on her computer. When she was done with this, if the delivery still hadn't arrived, she continue scanning her hard copies of bills of sale into digital files.<p>

When the bell rang, she looked at her watch. The delivery was supposed to come at noon, and it was now a quarter past. Still, the delivery men from the shoe wholesalers were not known for their punctuality, and Fiona was used to waiting until two or three o'clock. This was a welcome little surprise for her. She made her way through the back room to the front of the store.

"Hello," she said, opening the door to the delivery man. "I'll open up the door in back, and you can swing round."

"Er," the delivery man said. "D'you mind if I just bring it through the front? They've got me drivin' a different lorry today, and it won't fit in the alley back there. I checked."

"Oh," Fiona said, eyebrows raised. "All right. Just be careful of the dress stock."

"Sure thing, miss. Would you sign here, please?"

Fiona took the clipboard from him and gave her signature.

"Brilliant," the man said. "Mind holdin' the door for me?"

She stood to the side and held the door open while she watched the man load individual shoe boxes onto the dolly. He was a delivery man she had never seen before, and the way he was acting, he appeared to be somewhat new. Most of the drivers could manoeuver _any_ of the delivery vehicles into the back alley, and none of them ever loaded shoe boxes one-by-one. Usually, they were twined together with string or packed into larger boxes for expedience's sake. But Fiona Hart reckoned she was not the kind of person to make a fuss about this sort of thing, and that the delivery man would learn his trade, all in good time.

After a long, tedious wait, the man finally came down the little ramp with his wares piled on the dolly and made his way into the store. Most delivery men went backwards, dragging the dolly in front – easier to steer this way.

Not this man.

"Bloody hell!" he cried out.

"What?" Fiona said, her voice ringing out like a fire bell.

"Oh no, no, no," exclaimed the delivery man. "I've got black grease from the dolly on one of your dresses! Blimey, I'm so sorry, miss!"

"What?" she repeated, rushing over to where he was. She knelt, examining the damage.

A vintage 1945 wedding gown, made custom in Paris for the wealthy bride of a soldier returning from the war, in ecru and ivory, had got its train wrapped up in the wheels of the delivery dolly. A big, ugly black swirl now marred its perfect satin surface. Fiona gathered the train up in her hands, and involuntarily let out a cry.

"Oh my God," said the delivery man. "I'm so, so sorry!"

"I know, I know," she insisted. "Just… get those shoes back to the store room, would you?"

"Wait, I've got some cleaning agents in the lorry…"

"No, no, just go in the back and start stacking. I have some specialised anti-stain rubs behind the counter."

"You sure?"

She clenched her teeth. "Yes, I'm sure! You think you can just put Scotchgard on sixty-year-old satin? Just go."

"Okay, okay," the man panted. His hands were awkard, and he gestured as though he'd like to help.

"You see? This is why we don't bring stock through the front!" she muttered.

"I know, miss, I'm sorry!"

The delivery man pushed his wares into the back room, as he had been told.

* * *

><p>Leo Jones let go of the dolly as soon as he was through the curtain.<p>

"How long have we got?" asked the Doctor, who was already engaged in pulling computer wires out of the wall and wrapping them around his hands.

"I dunno," Leo shrugged. "Never cleaned black grease out of a wedding gown before. Could be an hour, could be five minutes."

"Well, go check!" the Doctor commanded. "Stack up the shoes, and then go back out there and be all… you know, rubbish and ham-handed, and then she'll want to spend more time watching you."

Leo gave a little salute and began stacking the shoe boxes onto the shelves. He didn't bother with the sizes or model numbers, like the _real_ delivery man had told him to do when they'd bribed him to give up this one drop-off. Leo just stacked as fast as he could.

"Okay boss, I'm goin' back in," Leo called out. "Page me when you're done."

"Okay. Whistle if she's headed back here."

"What will you do?" asked Leo.

"No idea," said the Doctor, disconnecting the scanner.


	9. Chapter 9

THREE MONTHS AND THREE WEEKS BEFORE THE WEDDING, LATER THAT DAY

Fiona Hart's computer sat upon the singular seat in the TARDIS console room. It wasn't hooked up to anything. It just sat there, looking at the Doctor. He didn't know why, but he felt it was mocking him.

He circled round it. "Okay, sweetheart," he said. "You don't like me, and I don't like you, but we're stuck with each other, yeah?"

A creak sounded from the direction of the door. Martha stuck her head inside, but did not come in.

"Hi," she said. Her face was twisted into an uncomfortable-looking expression.

"Hi," he replied. It was almost a question.

"Don't be angry, okay?"

"About what?"

Martha sighed and took a step back, letting the door drift open.

The boots on Tish Jones' feet made a soft clanging sound on the metal floor. She took two steps inside and just stood still. She did not allow her jaw to drop, nor allow her head to turn. She just stayed stiff as a board, only her eyes darting round the console room.

The Doctor's eyebrows raised in surprise when he saw her, but he didn't feel panic, nor wonder what had made Martha bring her here. He knew Tish had been one of their greatest supporters, and had gone out of her way to make this transition time easier on Martha. He also knew that he'd brought Martha into a life of secrecy, and that sooner or later, Tish was pretty well within her rights to demand a few answers. Especially if Martha had really tried to explain the problem with Fiona Hart's shop and the brides and the otherworldly energy.

He just hoped this wasn't too much of an answer for her.

He made his way slowly round the console, and stood a bit to the side and waited. Martha waited behind her. Briefly, the two of them made eye contact, but both were inscrutable as to their thoughts or feelings.

After a long, long moment, Tish began to walk tentatively, silently up the ramp toward the controls. Her head turned slightly to the left and right, but her expression remained stoic, and she didn't say a word. She didn't seem to breathe. The Doctor noted that her reaction to seeing the inside of the TARDIS for the first time was polar opposite to that of Martha, way back in that alley, after Leo's twenty-first.

She turned left when she reached the platform, toward the Doctor. She stared him in the eye as she began to make her way round the console. When she was standing between him and the controls, she stopped. She grazed her fingers and eyes across the edge of a circuit board, and took a deep breath and sighed.

"It travels in time?" she asked him, very softly, at last.

"Yes," he answered. His tone was light, and he even smiled a little.

Another long moment passed while everyone in the room stood still. Then she said, "It just looks like a box from the outside."

"Mm-hm," he nodded. "Keeps us safe."

A pause. She looked him in the eye again. "And you?"

"And me… what?"

"You're…" she tightened her lips and looked him up and down.

"Oh, yeah. I'm… not what I seem to be." In that moment, he knew that Martha had told her everything – or at least enough to make Tish's world collapse.

Suddenly Tish's eyes began darting about, she turned and looked at everything, she could get her eyes onto. She took in her situation, her surroundings, and when she stopped, she stared at her sister, who was still standing just inside the door. All at once, her eyes welled up with tears and her face fell into distortion, and she let out two little stifled sniffles.

It was the prelude to something bigger. She let the tears come then, overwhelmed and absolutely at a loss for any context or words. She couldn't speak, she couldn't shout or scream, she couldn't laugh, and she could never, ever turn back. She couldn't _un-know_ any of this. It was too much information, too much to take in all at once. Too much of her world-view, and how she thought of her family, had been turned upside-down, just by walking into this one room.

The Doctor stepped forward and caught her arm, just before her knees seemed to give out. Tish grabbed his lapels desperately and buried her face in his shoulder. She wept with tight, restrained sobs. Even her frustrated weeping didn't quite know how properly to express itself in this room. He tried to comfort her, but the state she was in, he reckoned she couldn't feel him anyway, didn't care whether his arms were around her or at his sides, and couldn't hear him lulling her.

Martha sighed and walked up the ramp. "I was afraid this would happen," she said to no-one in particular. She stroked her sister's shoulder, and she and the Doctor just waited for Tish to cry herself out.

* * *

><p>The Doctor used an old-fashioned Philips screwdriver to remove the side panel of Fiona Hart's CPU. The whole apparatus was now sitting in disarray on the console, as its previous seat was now occupied by Tish. She sat half-slumped forward, watching him.<p>

Then, he used the same low-tech device to remove the circuit board.

"What are you doing?" Tish asked, softly.

He stood up straight and looked at her through his lenses. "I'm er… dismantling Fiona Hart's computer."

"Oh. Because you think she's…" she trailed off, not knowing how to finish.

"We don't know what she is," the Doctor replied, very carefully taking the circuit board from inside. "And whatever it is that we think, Martha seems to think it more than I do."

"Okay," Tish conceded flatly. "How does Martha know? Is she an alien too?"

"Not as such," the Doctor answered off-handedly. He aimed the sonic at the circuit board, and it made the same sickly stinging buzz that it had made before. "But I'll tell you one thing. This thing has _definitely_ been tampered with. And not by a hacker."

"Whoa, that doesn't sound good," Martha commented, re-entering the room and hearing the twisted sonic pulse.

"It's _not_ good," he told her, without looking up.

After Tish had calmed down, Martha had guided her to the seat and asked if she wanted some tea, which Tish had accepted. She now set the steaming mug in Tish's hand with a towel to block the heat. "You all right?"

"I will be."

"Do you feel light-headed?" Martha asked, pressing the back of her hand to Tish's forehead.

"No," Tish answered. "I'm fine. Sorry I didn't believe you."

"It's okay. It's all pretty unbelievable. To anyone sane."

"Oi," said the Doctor quietly, smirking. Martha chuckled and smiled back.

"Well," Tish sighed, looking round the console room once again. "I asked you to prove it, and you did."

Martha smiled weakly and nodded. She decided just to give her sister time to adjust.

The Doctor set the circuit board down and hit a button on the console. A lampshade-shaped tool appeared out of nowhere, attached to some kind of cable above. The TARDIS had her own CPU, so to speak, and this cable was connected to her processor.

He adjusted the lampshade to hover over the circuit board, and then hit another button. A green light shone from the instrument, and it seemed to be scanning. He took a step back and waited.

Within a minute, some information popped up on the screen, and the Doctor pulled it in close to examine it. Martha looked at it from her vantage point standing beside Tish.

"Whoa," the Doctor said.

"Whoa is right," Martha commented, squinting at the loopy, Gallifreyan symbols. "That can't be… is this thing serious?"

"Yeah, look," the Doctor told her, pointing at a particular piece of data on the screen. "These numbers do not lie, Martha."

"Wait," Tish interjected. "You can read that?"

"Er, yes," Martha confessed.

"What is it?"

"It's, erm, the Doctor's native language," she explained gently.

"It's a bunch of circles!"

"Well, to us, it's words and numbers."

"Did you teach her how to do that?" Tish asked the Doctor, incredulously pointing at the screen.

"No," he said, uncomfortably.

"She picked it up on her own?"

"No," he said again. "I did _help_."

Tish looked back and forth at the both of them, waiting for an answer. Finally, their refusal to meet each others' eye gave them away. "Oh, I get it," Tish said, annoyed. She asked the Doctor, "What, your bodily fluids give her powers?"

"Ew, no," Martha said, scrunching up her nose. "It's the baby, Tish."

Tish gasped slightly, and her mouth opened. "Ohhh. So, it's going to be an alien too… and it's going to have… oh."

"He's a Time Lord, just like the Doctor, yes," Martha said. "This is the Time Lord language. They can see through time and space, they have perspective over all the threads of existence – it's in their guts. In their DNA. And right now, it's in me."

Tish swallowed hard and nodded, and Martha could see that she was on the verge of losing herself again. So Martha turned her attention to the information the TARDIS was yielding.

She indicated the screen. "So, the tampering is…"

"Yeah," the Doctor finished. "Coming from outside our reality. Just like that pocket in the Finnerans' home, and the one on the Tube."

"How is that even possible?"

"Well… to be fair, it _is_ easier to mess with technology on the other side of a void than with anything tangible," the Doctor said, tugging at the hair on the back of his head. "But it's hard to get right. Even with a smart device, the signals disperse when they cross the void and the effects would be more splintered."

"But this isn't splintered," Martha clarified. It was half question, half statement.

"No, this is very focused, intense. Almost like…"

He crossed his arms over his chest and bit his lower lip. He sighed heavily, staring at the stats on the screen.

"Almost like what?"

"Almost like the tampering is coming from _within_ the computer itself."

"What, like the computer is alive?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Why not? Mine is." He gestured with his head toward the console.

"But this is _outside_ reality, Doctor," Martha reminded him. "The computer exists in _this_ reality."

"So is there a localised pocket of void stuff inside the computer, or in the data? A miniature void ship converted to ones and zeroes?" he asked.

Martha was on her own train of thought already.

"So, something is affecting the brides, and this computer, in roughly the same way," Martha began to reason. "They're all being Shanghaied, in a manner of speaking, from someone or something outside this reality."

The Doctor blinked a few times. "Yes, I suppose you're right. The girls are being taken physically somehow, and the computer's functions are being taken… more abstractly."

Martha's face was showing frustration and concern. She put one hand on her hip and breathed out in exasperation. "What would anyone want with those two things?"

"Well, it's the Phlotigo, remember," said the Doctor. He was staring at the floor, and his lips were barely moving. "They're taking bodies, and maybe stealing technology… for non-corporeal beings… blimey, I don't like the sound of this."

Martha heard Tish's breathing grow ragged, as though she were fighting with her emotions again. Tish leaned over with her head in her hands and her elbows on her knees, and she groaned. Martha reckoned her head must be overflowing, bursting now.

Martha stepped forward and pulled the keyboard toward her. "Can I?" she asked the Doctor.

"Knock yourself out," he said, leaning against a railing nearby.

After a few key strokes, a normal Microsoft desktop appeared on the screen, with normal icons indicating normal applications. Martha clicked on the Outlook e-mail icon, and held out her hand for the sonic. The Doctor handed it over, and she used it to tap into Audacious Attire's e-mail account.

She looked at outgoing mail over the past two weeks; Letitia Jones' name came up only once.

"No, that's not right," Martha muttered. "Tish got over fifty e-mails from them not more than a week ago."

"And it hasn't got any better," Tish commented.

Martha aimed the sonic at the circuit board again, very carefully, and the computer seemed to malfunction for a few moments. For a horrible interval, she was afraid she'd demagnetised it or given it a virus or worse. The screen filled with rubbish numbers and symbols, and then suddenly, it stopped. The e-mail account's outgoing mail came up again. But this time, a display at the top of the screen read, "Last Two Weeks: 8,403,912 outgoing messages."

"Over eight _million_ messages? In the last two weeks?" Martha shouted. "Eight _million_?"

"And encrypted," the Doctor said, low, barely audible.

Martha scrolled down. The same woman's name came up on the screen over and over and over again, enough to fill the screen, and then some. Martha's eyes grazed over them, and she estimated seventy e-mails to the same person, someone named Nancy Best. She scrolled down more, and the same thing happened with a different name, and then another and then another. Eventually Letitia Jones came up. Martha counted. Eighty-six messages to Tish, just today.

"Look at this," Martha said to her sister, standing aside. "Do you understand this? Encrypted files that we couldn't access without our super alien tool indicating eighty-six e-mails to you today. _Now_ will you delete them?"

Tish's mouth was open and staring at the screen. "That was all hidden?"

"Yep. The regular e-mail account just showed one outgoing message in the past two weeks, addressed to you. When we used this," Martha said, tossing the sonic in the air and catching it, just like the Doctor, "It all came tumbling out. They are hidden for a reason, Tish. The computer has been tampered with from outside reality, and it's targeting certain people – certain women."

Tish closed her eyes and shook her head, seemingly trying to shake out the nonsense. "Outside reality."

"Yeah, just trust us on this," Martha insisted. "And look."

She typed _Amanda Finneran_ into the search field at the top. Almost three thousand outgoing e-mails came up, the last being on the day when Amanda Finneran disappeared.

"The earliest is a few months ago," Martha said. "Probably around the time when she bought her dress. It starts with four e-mails. Then within a week, it's twenty-five per day. The following week it's thirty. By the time she disappeared, she was getting upwards of a hundred e-mails per day from Audacious Attire. And the e-mails _stop_ on the day she disappeared. If it's a coincidence, it's a really, really big suspicious one."

She did the same with _Linnea Mays_ and found the same thing.

"And Tish, I asked her to stop sending you e-mails," Martha confessed. "I called Fiona Hart, pretending to be you, and told her to stop. And she didn't. So I'd say this is mightily damning, wouldn't you?"

Tish nodded, her eyes fraught with worry.

"Okay, okay," the Doctor said, stepping into a very tense moment. As though to take the _talking stick_ away from her and switch focus to himself, he tugged the sonic screwdriver gently from Martha's hand. "All of that is fair enough, but let's just examine this, shall we?"

"Examine what?" Martha wanted to know.

"Well, I don't think you're going to like hearing this, but, Martha, this evidence might actually clear Fiona Hart herself."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, she accesses her e-mail the old-fashioned way, probably, with a username and password. We only got through to the eight million messages because we have our _super alien tool_, as you said. What are the odds she's got one of those?"

"I don't know, you tell me."

"Not good," the Doctor said. "Especially if she's human."

"Okay," Martha said. "Put her computer back together, and I'll do what I should have done long ago."

"What's that?"

"Google Fiona Hart."


	10. Chapter 10

**Aagh! I'm sorry it's been so long! I will definitely update sooner this time. I promise!**

**This chapter is short but sweet, and not a whole lot happens. But I thought we might be overdue for a little Doctor/Martha tenderness, even if it's a bit of a tease... makes us feel all warm inside.**

**Hope you enjoy.**

* * *

><p><span>THREE AND A HALF MONTHS BEFORE THE WEDDING<span>

The Doctor sifted through, for the third time that week, a series of websites that Martha had bookmarked. They all had a bit of information concerning Fiona Hart. She wasn't a celebrity, but she _was _a member of an old, old family, traceable back to the 13th century. Their migrations from England to Ireland and back could be tracked through the ages. One of Fiona's uncles had done a great deal of research in the last 20 years to find all this, and had posted it online in the last five.

He and Martha had both gone through the information, and the web coding, to find anything suspicious, anything unreal or alien. But nothing had come up. They had been forced to conclude that Fiona Hart was fully human – just odd. She was mostly likely innocent.

But it still begged the question: what the hell was going on with her computer? Why did _she_ seem to be kidnapping women who shopped in her store from outside reality?

The Doctor was fairly certain that she had been in the thrall of an alien being for several months; Martha had said she wasn't sure that added up to _innocence_. But, as he had pointed out, it meant that the _real_ Fiona was buried inside somewhere, and needed help.

The door opened, and a harrowed Martha Jones entered with a garment wrapped in plastic slung over her shoulder. She let out a giant sigh, and threw her parcel over the railing.

"How did it go?" asked the Doctor, knowing it was a silly question. It had been one week since Tish had been brought into their bizarre bigger-on-the-inside world, and today was to be the first time that Martha and Tish had had to spend time with their mother since the new revelations had come to light.

"As was to be expected," Martha answered, leaning on the console near where the Doctor was working. "Mum fussing over the dresses and complaining about the colours. _Why do they have to be empire-waisted? Why did you choose taupe, Tish, it's dead boring – you want your bridesmaids to look like the desert? Why couldn't you have gone with the eggplant? Eggplant is such a flattering colour on Martha's skin, and I'm sure we could have made it work for Dana too…_"

"Well, I'm with her there," he smirked. "You do look nice in purple."

"Thanks. So Tish calmly answers each question without a fight, _justifying _each one of mum's whims, without ever asking her why she can't just let her have the wedding she wants, rather than finding fault everywhere. The normal Tish would have stood up to mum somehow or other, and she'd have done it with finesse… like… like what she is: someone who works in PR. But now, it's weird. It's like she's semi-catatonic now."

"Yeah. She's in a bit of shock still."

"I think we broke her, Doctor."

"We didn't break her," he assured her. "I've brought a lot of human beings into this old ship, and they've all come through it swinging."

"I know, I know, she just needs time," Martha sighed. "And space. Two things we're good at, eh? She'll come round, she's had a shock, put myself in her shoes..."

"Sorry," the Doctor muttered, recognising his own words, variations upon which he'd repeated at least a hundred times over the past week, being recited back at him. He decided against pointing out, however, how many times Martha had given him _cause_ to say those things.

"And all the while, Tish and I are avoiding each other's eyes," Martha continued. "So mum asks what's going on, 'cause she can see _something _is up. Hell, a blind wombat could see that something is up! Did we have a falling-out? Does one of us have _another_ secret we're keeping from her? Is Dana in on it? Is something going on with Dad? Is Leo okay? Has something gone wrong with the pregnancy? Is it the negotiations at the U.N.? Did a bridge fall down in rural South Korea? _Argh!_ A million questions!"

The Doctor reckoned it might be useless (and infuriating) to Martha to tell her once again that her mother is a mother, and mothers are like that, and she should remind herself of what she was about to become. So he just sighed and asked the next logical question: "What did you tell her?"

"I told her it was a matter between sisters, and asked if she couldn't just respect that."

"Did it work?"

"Of course not. When I left the store, she was still firing questions at Tish," she told him. "Blimey, Doctor. What's Tish going to say?"

"I dunno," he shrugged. "You know her better than I do. Maybe she'll just cave in and tell the truth. But you learned the hard way this week that _the truth_ sounds like insanity warmed over to most people, so… who knows? Maybe she'll just stay catatonic."

"I hope so," Martha exhaled. "I can't take mum's reaction to… well, you know. Ugh, that's so selfish."

"Yeah, but I understand. But you know that whatever happens, you can take her, right?"

"My mum? Maybe."

"Well, I'm not saying it'll be a cake walk, but… like everything else in your life, she'll accept it, or realise she may have to let go of you entirely. And that's every mother's worst nightmare, so…"

Martha's face fell, and her hand went instinctively to her slowly burgeoning abdomen. There was a tense silence. Then, "This bloody life…" she sighed.

The Doctor had made a _faux pas_, an easy thing to do these days, in the minefield of parent/child relations that Martha's life had become. He felt a flutter in his stomach, and not a good one. "Want to talk about it?" he asked. He felt the weight of the next thirteen years as acutely as Martha did. Only, he was used to dealing with rubbish like this, the cruel fates brought on by _this bloody life_, as Martha had put it.

"What's there to say?" she asked.

"Okay. So… change of subject. How's the dress? Empire-waisted and taupe, I presume?" He smiled a little.

"Yeah," she said, surprised, turning to look at the garment she'd tossed aside a few minutes before. She'd forgotten all about it. "I'm not that fond of it. I'm afraid my mum was right about the taupe. But by contrast, the bride will look radiant, right?"

"Next to you?" he asked with a smile. "No way."

She put one hand on her hip and looked at him as if to say, _oh, please._ They both chuckled, and then Martha picked up the wrapped dress by the hanger again, and looked at the cream-coloured plastic protective cover. "Well, it's not for me to say, anyway. I might change my mind later – haven't even tried it on yet."

"I thought that was the whole point of today's excursion."

"It was," she said. "So we got Dana fitted. Me, I'll have to wait until just before the wedding to have it altered because I will be… well, bigger, when that day comes."

"Ah," he said. "Well, can I see it?"

She smirked. "I'm not sure. I don't know if I want you seeing me in _taupe_."

"Martha, you could wear a canvas bag tied off with burlap string, and I'd like seeing you in it."

* * *

><p>It was tan chiffon, spaghetti-strapped and it wasn't <em>the worst <em>thing Martha had ever worn. Across the bust, the fabric was patterned like an accordion, and trimmed on both top and bottom with satin ribbon. A little bow punctuated the short bodice at the mid-point. It gathered just below the bust, and flared out like a bell made from liquid sand. The hem of the dress came to a point just above her knees, and the matching shoes buckled round her ankles.

It was nice, plain though it was. But one thought dominated her ruminations on the dress, and she said it out loud. "Blimey, I'm going to look _so pregnant_ in this thing!"

"Well, there's no such thing as _a little bit _pregnant." the Doctor's voice came from the adjoining room.

"Sure there is," she argued. "When you can still hide it."

He walked into the room. He was behind her, but she was facing a wall of mirrors that curved round her. She could see the little smile on his face. "Do you want to?" he asked.

She felt sheepish. "No, I don't," she said truthfully. "It's just that sometimes my body doesn't feel like _mine_ anymore."

"Well, you're only sharing it temporarily," he told her. He put his hands on her bare shoulders, and leaned down to kiss her neck.

"No, I mean…" she said, pausing to sigh. "Doctor, I stopped growing at age twelve. Five-foot-two, a hundred pounds, give or take – that's me, that's my body. For half my life now. I've liked it – it's been dependable. I know how it works, how it moves, how it feels, what makes it hurt, what exhausts it. It always looks a certain way, I can count on a consistent dress and trouser size, bra size, all of it. Never had to think about it."

"I see. And now you have this," he said. He slid his hands round her hips and placed them over the little bump, just below her navel. It was noticeable to _them,_ but no-one else.

"Exactly. Just an inch or two," she sighed, leaning her head back against him. "Barely even there yet, and already I can't wear my own jeans. Some shirts are getting iffy now, too. I've never had that happen, Doctor. Never gained inches around my waist, and certainly haven't seen any action _above_ the waist in quite some time. I'm growing and changing and hurting for reasons I can't always identify, even _with _some medical background. It's like someone else's body, and it's only going to get worse."

"I'll dispense with telling you that it _does_ sort of belong to someone else right now, and that those inches around your waist…"

"I know… that it's all a very good thing, and the rewards are going to outweigh the price."

"Well, yes. That, and that it's all rather appealing to me." He smirked, and rubbed her stomach gently, through the delicate fabric. "So I'll just say this: Martha, the last time I lost or gained any weight, I also grew two or three vertical inches of hair, lost about six inches around my shoulders, and shrunk an inch in height. My eyes changed colour, my voice got higher, my ears, eyes and nose shrank, and my neck got longer. And all in the span of about thirty seconds."

She smiled. "I get it."

"Plus, my personality changed. I'm talking about a one-eighty shift. And let me tell you, the person I was travelling with…"

"Freaked out?'

His eyes narrowed, remembering the first day of his current life. "Honestly, I was asleep, but I was told there was crying."

"Crying?"

"I had just changed right before her eyes."

"Okay, I can see it." Martha wondered if she would be with the Doctor long enough to experience this phenomenon herself. She didn't think she'd cry, but feeling the familiar arms around her, she couldn't be sure.

"But, then, I valiantly challenged an intergalactic mobster to a broadsword duel for the planet, and sacrificed my very flesh to save the world, that is."

"You did?"

"Well, sort of."

"I see."

"Then, she liked me again."

She laughed. "So I've heard. Smart girl."

"Yeah, usually."

"Okay. Point taken, Doctor. I have it easy."

"Well, I won't tell you it's easy," he said, kissing her neck again. "I'm just saying… it could be _a lot_ weirder."

She closed her eyes and sighed, and just relished the feeling of his arms around her, and his lips moving over her skin. He hooked one finger through one flimsy spaghetti strap and pulled it loose so it fell down her arm. He kissed the smooth area where it had been, then disengaged the other strap, and did the same. She leaned back into the embrace and thought she felt his whole body tighten around her.

As a rush of tingly heat came over her, she became acutely aware that it had been at least five days since they had had any intimate physical contact. They had been wrapped up in Tish's life, in researching the enigmatic Fiona Hart and getting ready for the arrival of their son. This was the longest-ever interval for them, barring the beginning their relationship when he was altogether unaware, and the weird week in which they discovered who their son would become, and didn't want even to look at each other.

"Doctor," she whispered. "It's been days."

"I know," he whispered back, gently biting her earlobe. He looked up into the mirror in front of them, and so did she. "You know, every moment this dress is out of its plastic packaging, is a moment when it's at risk. It would be a shame to have to dry clean it before you actually wear it."

"I'd better get out of it, then," she said coyly.

He gingerly slipped the zip down, along the side of the dress, and she let it fall to the floor.


	11. Chapter 11

THREE AND A HALF MONTHS BEFORE THE WEDDING, THE FOLLOWING DAY

"What's wrong? Do you not like your Eggs Florentine?" Martha asked. Tish had been pushing a limp piece of spinach around on her plate for the past few minutes, leaning her cheek and chin on her hand. She still had an entire slice of muffin and a circle of ham left on her plate. Martha, however, had finished her breakfast and had already asked for an after-meal decaf refill.

"Hm? Oh, no, it's fine," Tish said, looking up, but not really meeting Martha's eyes. "Just preoccupied. Wedding stuff."

That was a rubbish excuse and they both knew it.

"Wedding stuff?" Martha asked. "Shouldn't you look happier, if it's wedding stuff?"

Tish pulled in a huge breath, and then let out a huge sigh. "I suppose."

"Tish, it's me."

"I know…"

"No, listen," Martha encouraged, turning her sister's chin up so that they could look each other in the eye. "I know what's bothering you, and _it's me._"

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. It's a lot to take."

Tish nodded absently. "Yeah."

The two of them had spent at least two hours the previous weekend discussing Martha's life with the Doctor, their travels and adventures, and the incredible things they'd seen and done together. Relieved to finally let the secret out, Martha had animatedly told her how the TARDIS travels in time, and how, on their first trip together, they had met Shakespeare, and thwarted the Carrionites. She had told the story of New New York and the humans who had made it across the stars, five billion years, and had changed so little. She told the strange story of the Daleks in Manhattan, a rare (though not singular) mix of intergalactic conflict and living in familiar human history. Tish had asked questions along the way, and Martha had answered them as best she could, now better equipped than ever to explain the mysteries of the universe to another human being.

Upon being prompted, Martha had told Tish a few of the details of the Doctor's species, how they had once governed time and space, and had certain "rules" that the Doctor now followed intermittently. Tish wondered how the Doctor could be part of all of that, could know and do all of the things he does, and Martha had told her that the Doctor is hundreds of years old, and only looks young because he regenerates if his body dies. He had spent, as far as Martha knew, most of his long, long life trouble-shooting throughout time and the cosmos, and eventually had been left alone in the universe with no home to go back to. And this is how he became so attached to the Earth.

After that, Tish's brain went on a kind of overload. The rational side of her mind had violently taken over at that point, probably a coping mechanism, and she challenged Martha to _prove_ the things she was saying. The impossible TARDIS interior had been proof enough, apparently, and the sight of the incredible control panels and otherworldly light coming from its heart had brought her, almost literally, to her knees. After that, she had had no trouble believing the Doctor was everything they claimed, and that all things were now possible.

But with all of that, including the questions Tish had asked the Doctor himself, the sisters had never discussed Martha's _relationship_ with the Doctor. Watching Tish too preoccupied to finish her eggs, Martha suspected now that knowing all of these adventures occurred was one thing – aliens, other planets, time travel, daring escapes and coming near death. Tish had had a taste of it when Lazarus ran amok.

But knowing that Martha herself was inextricably entwined it in all, and not just experientially. To know that she was so in love with the _alien_ at the centre of it all, that she had followed him, and her heart, across the universe… to know that she had given herself to him so completely, and that she was going to have his _alien_ baby, and that now something of his _alien _consciousness now coursed through her…

Well, Martha reckoned, Tish must be wondering what the hell all of _that _meant.

"Come on, then," Martha chirped. "Hit me."

"What?"

"We haven't had the 'girl talk' bit of this discussion yet," Martha pointed out. "What do you want to know?"

"Nothing," Tish said. "Not right now."

"Are you sure? Might make you feel better."

"Yeah. Not now."

"Okay," Martha replied. She wished she could say, _if you don't want to talk about it, then get over it, so we can have a proper chat, already._ But she didn't. Instead, she turned to the satchel at her side which contained her laptop. "Well, I brought this. Want to look at D'Adamio's?"

"Oh, cakes. Right. Sure."

"Or do you need to wait for Robert Oliver for that?"

"No, no," Tish told her flatly. "He says all he cares about is what he has to wear, and that the caterer puts Feta in the stuffed mushrooms instead of Gorgonzola."

Martha chuckled. "All right. Interesting request."

As she logged into the restaurant's wireless service, she snuck a glance across the table. Tish was, once again, sitting with her elbow on the table and her cheek resting against her fist. Her other hand was occupied with not eating breakfast. She went to D'Adamio's home page.

"Dance and Romance," Martha said. "Antique Chic, or Fine Lines?"

"Excuse me?"

"D'Adamio's has three styles of cake. One of them is lacy and frilly and _romantic_, one of them is sort of classic wedding cake fodder with the tiers sitting on legs and the little bride and groom at the top, and the other is trendy minimalist, with straight lines and an almost geometric quality. Which one should we start with?"

Tish seemed to contemplate for a moment. Then she blurted out, "Did you know from the beginning?"

"What?"

"Did you know that you loved him from the beginning?"

Martha's eyebrows raised, and she took her hands away from the keyboard, rather disarmed. "Oh. Well, I knew I felt something from the beginning. I didn't know I was in love with him until it looked like we might get separated."

"Oh. Go for Dance and Romance first."

Again, disarmed and surprised, Martha obliged and clicked on the requested link. "Wow, Tish, these are serious cakes. They don't come in any less than four tiers! Did mum or dad give you a cake budget?"

"So, what, it was just a crush?"

Martha blinked twice, again, switching gears. "I suppose," she answered. "You know how it is. You meet someone cute, you feel a tingle in the pit of your stomach, so you decide to get involved, see if it goes anywhere."

"Lust."

Martha smiled. "Well, maybe. All I know is I felt something come alive when he winked at me the first time, and…"

"Why don't you do a search by colour?" Tish asked.

"Er, okay," Martha conceded, squinting, concentrating again on the screen. She typed in, _eggplant_ and _taupe_. "No results for your colours. Let me try something else… I have a feeling…" she continued to type.

"Did you act on it straight away?"

"What, the colour search?"

"No. Lust."

Martha looked back up at her. "No. Not straight away."

"Why not? Afraid of the alien thing?"

"No," Martha told her, thinking. "It was more like _he _was afraid of the _human_ thing."

"Oh," Tish said. Then her face scrunched up. "So does that mean… don't the… I mean… never mind."

"Don't the… what?"

"Nothing. Did you put in purple and beige?"

"Yes, but… oh, here it is. Most of the cakes can be airbrushed to match your exact wedding colours, if you can provide fabric swatches."

"I suppose I could ask Daniel's of London for swatches," Tish mused.

"Oh, is that where we were…"

"…yeah, last weekend, buying the bridesmaid dresses," Tish finished. "Don't the parts match up?"

"Parts of what?"

"Human bits and… Time Lord bits." She said the last three words with a kind of distaste, as though she was trying it on for flavour and had not yet learned to appreciate it.

Martha laughed a little. "No, they match up."

"I mean, like, the naked bits… when you're close and it's dark…"

"I know what you mean, Tish," Martha insisted. "Why are you skirting around it? What are you, twelve?"

Tish closed her eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm just having a hard time," she said. Then, she gulped, and seemed to wind up for a blow. "When you have sex with him, do you fit together?"

The question came out awkwardly, Tish's mouth pulled taut.

Martha smiled. "He's built exactly like a human, except he has two hearts and different kind of brain. All of the _external_ stuff is the same."

"You know, I really don't have any preconceptions," Tish told her.

Martha's eyes went instinctively sideways, in uncomfortable confusion. "About… sex with the Doctor?"

"About what kind of cake I want. Maybe I'd better wait until after we've chosen the flowers."

"It's up to you, but…"

"So, the nice-looking guy in the suit… that's how he looks? It's not a disguise? There isn't, like, a slime creature hiding under a glamour or something?"

"No, what you see is what you get. That's how he looks. For now, anyway. Don't forget, they can regenerate. But, the Time Lords are – were – humanoid."

"Do they have anything in paisley?" asked Tish.

"The Time Lords?"

"No, D'Adamio's. Aren't we looking at cakes?"

"We seem to be multi-tasking now," Martha muttered, searching. "There's something called _Dramatic Victorian_. It's quite pretty, actually." She turned the computer to face Tish.

"I like it," Tish said. "I wonder if they could do the fondant in taupe and the swirly bits in eggplant."

"Only one way to find out," Martha said. "Should I e-mail them?"

"So if you're, you know, anatomically compatible, what did you mean when you said that he was afraid of the human thing?"

"Just that, he's almost always got a human travelling with him, and he always outlives them."

"I see. Fear of commitment."

"Not just that. He'd got really, _really_ close to the girl who was there before me, and had lost her. I don't know all the details of how that happened, but from what I can gather, it was pretty hideous. I think that really brought it all home for a while. Reminded him, you know?"

"Of how it could never work?"

"Well, at least, of how hard it could be. To love and to lose."

"Yeah, so, send them an e-mail," Tish said. "And cc me on it. Please."

"Okay," Martha said. "Let me get… oh, the server wants me to log in again."

"So what made him change his mind?"

"About being with me?"

"Yeah."

Martha sighed, thinking of their time together in that big house with the skeleton in the basement. The plague that had made the Doctor ill, and the revelations that had turned their lives upside-down, some of which involved Tish herself.

"Oh, it's a long story," Martha told her. "I think it's one for another day."

"Can't you give me the abridged version?"

Martha stared at her for a few seconds. Then, "He'd got sick, so I took care of him. And in his fevered, near-comatose state, he had a bunch of prophetic-slash-erotic dreams."

"Prophetic _and _erotic? At the same time?" Tish asked, smiling for the first time in a week. She put on a bad Romanian accent. "As in, _you will soon shag your travelling companion, and here's now it will look!"_

"Sort of, yeah. Only, I guess they were somewhat violent as well."

"That's scary."

"A little, yeah. But a lot of it was us burning together. Burning each other out. Like, into cinders. Which makes a lot more sense when you realise that his body temperature had risen to near-fatal proportions."

"Still. Is _he _scary?"

Martha frowned. "No. Do _you_ find him scary?"

"No, I don't," Tish told her. "But I mean, is he scary when he's… you know."

"Oh. No, not at all," Martha answered with another little laugh. "I mean, I guess he has his aggressive side, but most guys do. What kind of question is that, anyway?"

"Well, how the hell should I know? He's an alien! What am I supposed to think?"

Martha laughed. "Tish, you're being silly. You don't have to worry about him."

"It's not about him, Martha. It's about you. I really don't care who he is. I care how he affects _you_. I'm trying to get my mind around _you_. We've been talking about _this kind of thing_ since we were at school, and now, suddenly…"

"Your sister has an alien fetish?"

"Well, yeah."

"Trust me, Tish, it's not about having an alien fetish. It's about _him_."

"I can see that, I guess."

"Our lives are strange, yes. We have experiences that would make most people's heads explode. But our personal life, our intimate life? It's absolutely normal."

"It is?" Tish asked, almost relieved to hear it.

"Well, actually, no. It's better than normal. It's extraordinary. It's the most in love you've ever been, and the best sex you've ever had, and the most fear you've ever felt, and the most intense emotions at every point on the spectrum… it's what everyone dreams of having. Everyone. I've been all over the universe, Tish, and I know: it's everyone. Not just humans."

Tish smirked. "So you're telling me that your love transcends the cosmos?"

Martha laughed out loud. "Yes!"

"Okay," Tish laughed back. "I'll take your word for it."

Martha crossed her arms sceptically, and leaned back. "Is _this_ what's been bothering you? The idea that I'm involved in kinky Martian sex parties, with, like, teeth and tentacles and green goo?"

"I didn't know what to think!"

"Oh, Letitia Jones," Martha whined.

Tish laughed again. "I know it's none of my business but…"

"Yeah, yeah, I can see how this would have you a little preoccupied."

"Okay, so are you going to e-mail D'Adamio's or not?"

"If you want," Martha conceded. She'd gone to the Yahoo website, and the newsflashes had been rotating for the past few minutes while she and Tish had been talking about non-weird alien sex. A picture, probably a stock image, of a beautiful bride dressed in white came up, just before she clicked on the mail option. The caption read, _London D__isappearances of Blushing Brides, Serial Crimes?_

"Oh, God," Martha groaned.

"What?"

"Another one. Another bride gone missing."

"Great. Who is it this time?"

Martha squinted at the screen. "Anne-Marie Doyle, aged twenty-two. Disappeared right off the street, in front of the restaurant where she and the wedding party had had their rehearsal dinner."

"Let me see that," Tish demanded, pulling the computer toward her. "It says here, '_Family members and friends report that she had been exceedingly nervous about the evening's proceedings, wondering whether the restaurant would come through with the correct vintage of Beaujolais Nouveau. After the dinner, she was unusually excited, stating that she was _well chuffed_ about the wine and cheese combination, and that she just had a feeling that things were going to go just perfectly for her special day, the following morning. After the wine and cheese comment, no-one can remember seeing her or hearing her speak. All of them consistently say that they simply turned around and she was gone."_ So, what, no-one saw anything? Like she just disappeared into thin air?"

"Yep."

"Well, how is anyone supposed to investigate this, when the witnesses know bloody nothing?" Tish asked, a little to excitedly.

"Welcome to our world," Martha muttered, taking her computer back. "Let's see if we can find out where she bought her gown, eh?"

Martha Googled _Anne-Marie Doyle_ and _Audacious Attire._ The first hit was on the Audacious Attire website itself, and Miss Doyle's name seemed to be mentioned there. She clicked on it, and gasped a little.

"What?" Tish asked.

"There they are."

"Who?"

"The brides. There's Amanda Finneran, Linnea Mays, Anne-Marie Doyle… and like fifteen others I've never heard of. This is crazy!"

Tish turned the computer sideways so they could both look. Individual photos of the brides in the gowns they had purchased at Audacious Attire appeared there on the site, each with a caption about the dress, its era, who had previously owned it, and a word or two about the woman herself.

"I don't know, Tish, do they look… _uneasy_ to you?" Martha asked, citing the worried smiles on each of the girls' faces. "It's like they're being _told_ to smile and act like nothing's wrong, don't you think? But these pictures would have been taken bore anything weird happened, wouldn't they? So that doesn't make much sense, does it?"

Tish ignored her. "What the hell is this?" she asked, pointing to some text on the site. She practically shouted as she read, "_'All of our beautiful brides are asked to pose in their gown, upon purchase of the garment. We want to bring the human touch to our shoppers, and let you see how well real women wear our select styles!'"_

"So?"

"So, I was never asked to pose."

"Oh, so you think the pictures are being taken _after_ the brides disappear?"

"Ugh, that's so dark, Martha."

"Again, I say, welcome to our world."

"Well, isn't there any way for you to tell? I mean, can't you just _scan _it with that alien buzzy thing? Check for energy that's out-of-this-world, or whatever you called it?"

"I could, if I had it," Martha said. "The Doctor rarely gives it up."

"Let's get back to the TARDIS! What are we waiting for?"

Martha blinked several times at her sister. "Blimey, it didn't take you long to get over that kinky green goo issue, did it?"


	12. Chapter 12

**Sorry again for the long absence. Unfortunately, there might be another long absence coming, but I will not give up! I will be traveling over the holidays and not in a position to write! If I don't get a chance to update before then, have a Happy New Year!**

* * *

><p><span>THREE MONTHS BEFORE THE WEDDING<span>

Martha marched up to the door, which had been panelled with textured copper, with the Doctor in tow. In one hand, she carried a shoebox full of odds and ends: pencils, pencil sharpeners, erasers, a few photos of Tish as a child, copies of a mock quiz concerning the details of Tish's life, and a sheet of paper with movie quotes having to do with weddings. The other hand held a shopping bag in which she carried five rolls of purple crêpe streamers, six vases stuffed with daisies dyed to an eggplant hue, twenty-six frilly notebooks and pens as party favours, a pair of dress shoes, and a bright red box containing an equally bright red lace teddy.

Behind her, the Doctor carried a large box containing a chrome Kitchen-Aid mixer, weighing thirty-five pounds, and having cost five hundred. It was giftwrapped in yellow and silver, and tied with a bow the size of the Doctor's fist. Over his shoulder, Martha had draped a change of clothes for herself.

They entered Anya's Tea House, which was as opposite to a tea house as Martha had ever seen, at 12:30 sharp, and her mum was already there. She was bent over one of the tables, writing a cheque. A tiny, but severe-looking, blonde woman stood nearby.

The place had a rainforest cabana (if there was such a thing) look about it. Hallowed-out bamboo hung strategically from the ceiling, and the walls were panelled with rough-looking oak. The window in front was trimmed with the same copper as the front door's plating, and all of the chairs seemed to be made of the same stuff. There was a bar (what kind of tea house has a bar?), also with copper stools, bamboo panelling, and a bamboo edge. The artificial sound of rain and birds was piped in, along with some bizarre Sitar music, and a hypnotic woman's voice singing in Senegalese Wolof. The clash of South American, Indian and African was truly dizzying; but even more dizzying was that Martha could suddenly recognise and understand Wolof.

But this "tea house" had been Tish's choice, and far be it from Martha to judge where her sister requested her own bridal shower.

"Hi, darling," Francine said, looking up briefly as she signed her name. "Just give me a moment here…" She tore the cheque from the pad and handed it to the blonde woman, who thanked her with a thick Russian accent, and then disappeared.

Francine's eyes then registered the Doctor. "Hello. Good gracious, what's in that box?"

"It's a…" he looked at Martha.

"It's the mixer," she told her mum.

"Oh. Well, you can put it over there," she told him, pointing to a table that, as yet, appeared to be empty except for a large, beige sheet cake, trimmed in purple frosting and one medium-sized box, which the Doctor assumed was Francine's gift to Tish. "That's where the _real_ gifts go. The embarrassing and inappropriate gifts go over on the smaller table."

Martha rolled her eyes and approached the smaller table indicated, and set down the bright red box, which contained the teddy. Francine had never come round to accepting the idea of giving Tish a lingerie shower (in addition to a regular gifts-from-the-registry shower). Martha hadn't told her it was actually Tish's idea.

The Doctor then laid Martha's change of clothes over one of the chairs, then took one of the rolls of streamers from the bag, and started unwrapping it.

"You don't have to do that," she told him, putting her hand over his. "You can go, it's okay. I'll be back in a few hours."

He smirked. "I don't want you climbing around on the tables."

She looked about. The tables did not yet have cloths on them. This was at Martha's request, because she knew they'd want to hang decorations, and would need the tables to stand on.

As if on cue, Dana and Tish then entered the tea house. The Doctor went to unburden Dana's arms of the two gifts she was carrying, as she was also carrying extra clothes and a bag full of random stuff. Tish's arms were full of thank-you favours for her bridesmaids and her mum.

The Doctor set the gifts on the appropriate tables, assuming that the one wrapped in white paisley paper was the registry gift, and the thin one wrapped in glossy hot pink with a black bow, was the "embarrassing and inappropriate" gift. Tish followed him over, ostensibly to set down her packages. But she leaned over and whispered, "Heard anything new on Anne-Marie Doyle?"

He looked at her as though she were being extremely tedious. "Not in the fourteen hours since the last time you asked."

Tish had spent the previous evening in the TARDIS' kitchen with Martha and their laptops, first checking, and double-checking, then re-checking to see if any new developments had unfolded in Miss Doyle's disappearance. She checked for police reports, eyewitness accounts, any information at all on the bride herself. The Doyle family, apparently, had led an incredibly quiet existence, and there was nothing to be had. Martha, for her part, was going over the details of the shower while chatting online with Dana, who was making arrangements to have the cake delivered early. At one point, the Doctor had wandered in and marvelled at the odd state of affairs – Tish investigating and Martha doing wedding stuff. He reckoned Tish must be mightily nervous now, to put her mind so intently on this mystery.

The Doctor and Martha had already tried to gumshoe the case, just like the other two disappearances. But they had been met with an oddly impenetrable wall of silence, and had come up with nothing. The Doyle family insisted they'd already spoken to the police and weren't going to bloody do it again, no matter how _special_ these the investigators were. Anne-Marie's fiancé and his family were presenting a similarly united front, as were the bridesmaids and groomsmen.

A trip to the scene of the disappearance had yielded nothing new; residue from a pocket of energy outside this reality, probably of Phlotigo origin, just like the other two. They'd tried speaking to the restaurant staff, but the incident had occurred outside, and no-one who worked there had seen anything.

"Ergh!" exclaimed Tish. "This is so frustrating! How do you two do this all the time? It's like trying to break through a brick wall!"

"Shhh," he urged her. "We'll get it, Tish. You just have to be patient. Eventually, every slimy alien messes up and exposes himself. It will happen – it always does."

"Don't you have some way of, you know, forcing him (or it) out into the open? I mean, aren't you like, Interplanetary Troubleshooter Man?"

He sighed. "Keep your voice down, please. And as I told you last night, no. I don't have a way of forcing it out into the open. Phlotigo beings are intangible. They have no immediate needs, therefore, they are exceedingly, and notoriously, difficult to manipulate. All we can do is investigate each planet one-by-one and hope it gets narrowed down for us soon."

"How many planets have you looked at?" she asked. She was whispering, but rasping, and tension was breaking her voice.

"Only seven," he said.

"Out of?"

"Several hundred."

"Well, what…"

"We're doing our best, okay? It just so happens that Martha has a thing or to on _this _planet to think about, or had you forgotten?"

"But you've got a time machine! You two could could have gone to investigate and still have been back in time for the shower today!"

He sighed heavily again. "It's a very slippery slope, Tish. It's dodgy at normal times, but with Martha pregnant, it's even dodgier. And I don't just mean the possibility of her getting hurt, which is a different kettle of fish altogether. I mean, if we don't stay on the slow path with you, we run the risk of getting held up somewhere for months, and Martha being unduly _large_."

"What?"

"Think about it. We get captured somewhere in the Phlotigo for, say, four months. By the time we get out of there, she's eight months along! We can't show up here with her looking like that, when people, especially your mum, know she's only four months in right now. She'd have to miss everything – the shower, the Hen night, even the wedding."

"But…"

"Would you two shut up?" Martha interjected. "You are not as quiet as you think you are!"

"Oh! Did mum hear us?" Tish asked, covering her mouth.

"Don't you think she would have said something if she had?" Martha asked. "All the same – shut up!"

They all looked about. Dana had her head in one of the shopping bags, and Francine was over at the bar, requesting a knife to cut the cake. Tish, Martha and the Doctor broke up their confab as she headed back with the knife in her hand and set it down beside the cake.

Martha picked up the packet of streamers, tossed it at Dana and said, "You are now head of the decorations committee. I'm not allowed to climb." She elbowed the Doctor gently in the ribs.

"Quite right," Francine said, climbing up. She, unlike Martha and Dana, had not brought a change of clothes, and stood, in her Chanel-clad glory, high heels and all, on a table. "Hand over the streamers, love, and some adhesive tape."

Martha had forgotten that part, but luckily, Dana had not. The Doctor shrugged and excused himself, secretly and unbelievaly relieved.

As he rounded the corner, heading back to the adjacent block where he'd parked the TARDIS, a phone rang in his pocket. It was Martha's mobile, which she'd asked him to grab as they were running out the door.

He looked at the display, and saw a name and number he didn't recognise.

"Er, hello?"

There was a pause, and then a very mousy female voice. "Is this Detective Sergeant Smith?"

"Erm, I guess so. Yes. Yes it is."

There was another long silence. He heard the girl sniff. "Hello. I'm…"

He gave her time to elaborate, but when she did not, he stopped walking. "It's all right. Go ahead and say what you need to say – what do you need?"

"I'm Betsy."

"Hi, Betsy."

"I'm Anne-Marie Doyle's cousin," she told him, her voice quavering.

"Oh," he said, surprised. "Thank you for calling."

"Can you meet me?"

"Now?"

"Yes."

"My partner is, er, tied up with another case at the moment," he said. "Do you mind if we wait until this evening when she's free?"

The young woman seemed to contemplate. "All right, but… don't let anyone know."

"You have my word."

They arranged to meet at seven o'clock at a Starbucks on a busy thoroughfare.

* * *

><p>At ten minutes to two, Francine Jones saw the first official shower guests approaching from across the street. "Girls! For God's sake, go change!" She picked up Martha's change of clothes and threw them at Dana, and vice versa, then authoritatively pointed toward the toilets in the back of the tea house.<p>

Martha and Dana went giggling to the ladies'. Martha applied a spot of makeup, then put on a lavendar sleeveless top with a pair of khaki-coloured silk slacks that had always run a bit big for her around the waist. She slipped some chocolate brown pumps on her feet and, with her friend, joined the party. By the time they emerged, at least ten guests had arrived, and both of the gift tables were filling up nicely.

They had distinctly non-tea-house fare as appéritifs (flatbread wafers with hummus, caramelised onions and ginger), and as lunch (yoghurt curry soup with potato and leeks, alongside mini-tacos with blackened salmon, shredded cabbage and mango salsa dip). Martha chuckled at the eclectic variety, and the absurdity of it all. She tried to make simple, casual conversation, but Francine "outed" Martha's pregnancy to all, and derailed her quiet bridesmaid-ness. So she spent the better part of two and a half hours answering questions about morning sickness, fatigue and responding with a nod to people saying innane things like "Oh, your life is about to change!" as if she didn't know.

After the champagne (or in Martha's case, ginger ale) toast and cake, Tish was forced into a chair on one end of the room, and gift after gift was placed in her lap. Martha wrote down which valuable item came from whom, Dana took care in keeping the floor free of tissue paper and ribbons, and they all watched Tish grow more and more wound-up over the showering of affection.

She was excited to receive the non-scratch fibreglass cutting board she'd had her eye on, and the set of ceramic sushi knives. She seemed to adore the Egyptian cotton sheets (in her precise colour of purple), and she definiely was taken with the espresso machine, with all its exciting attachments.

And then it came time for the "embarrassing and inappropriate" bit. The champagne was flowing, and the women whipped themselves into a frenzy of giggly excitement, clapping in rhythm as Tish chose the first of the saucy _adult_ gifts.

As Tish pulled a tiny black lace thong from the box, a loud batch of "Woooo!" reverberated through the room, and even Tish herself was smiling uncontrollably. She pulled then a matching bra from the box, and held them both up and shook her hips a little as the whole room howled. To Martha's surprise, even Francine was in on the noise. Martha reckoned she'd had a couple glasses of bubbly. Just as well – she was easier to deal with this way.

"And Tish-Tish," said a plump girl with too much makeup from across the room. "It's from me!" Martha recognised her as Tish's university mate, Sophie.

Martha jotted down, _Black lace pants and bra – Sophie._

Out of the next box came another matching set in black lace.

After the whistling died down, Tish said, "Martha, this is from Elaine."

"Okay," Martha said. "Er, how would you like me to differentiate them? The last one and this one are similar."

"No, Martha," Tish said, in all seriousness. "The last one was a thong. This one is crotchless."

"Oh," Martha commented. "Of course. How silly of me." She wrote _Black lace __crotchless__ pants and bra – Elaine_ on the next line. She reckoned that this task would get stranger and stranger with each progressive piece of naughty fodder that Tish opened. She shook her head; sometimes she missed being able to see the world through alcohol-soaked eyes.

The fervour grew bigger and bigger with each slinky lace, satin, rubber or fishnet item that came forth in black, red, hot pink or in one case, _mood changing_ colours. By the time Tish got to the teddy Martha had brought, the thing seemed downright tame, in comparison. After all, it hadn't come with a whip, flavoured lubricant nor restraints of any sort.

The final gift was from Tish's friend Brynn, who had been her best friend in secondary school, and with whom she had spent her gap year in the Netherlands.

"Okay, now, Tish," Brynn called out, barely able to stand from the alcohol. "Remember that thing… that _thing_ we saw in Amsterdam that you wanted… said it would drive…."

"Brynn!" Tish screeched delightedly, shushing her naughty friend. "Yes! I remember! There's no need to say it here!"

"Welllll…"

"Oh my God!" Tish cried out. "You didn't!"

"I most certainly did," Brynn answered. "Thank you, thank you, Gods of the internet."

Tish let out a totally inarticulate scream, and when she opened the box and peered into it, her jaw dropped and her eyes bulged.

"This is the exact one!" she shrieked. "This is brilliant! Aaah!"

And at that moment, as Martha watched her sister in this kind of drunken, girlish frenzy, fuelled by stress, anger and anticipation, something changed.

Drastically.


	13. Chapter 13

**Hi, I'm back! Had a lovely trip, even stayed in London for a week and soaked up all the ambience of the New Year in our fandom's favorite city! Sorry this has taken so long, but I hope you enjoy it!**

* * *

><p><span>THREE MONTHS BEFORE THE WEDDING, LATER THAT DAY<span>

Martha was busy putting bud vases back into a box, and Dana, along with one other slightly-less-drunk party guest, was up on a table, taking down streamers.

"Here," a voice said. It was Tish, all loopy. She tripped slightly coming across the room and pressed her mobile phone into Martha's hand. "It's for you."

"It's for me?"

"Something about… coffee. I don't know – he's _your_ alien."

Martha's eyebrows raised, and she glanced at the display. The caller ID said that the text message had come from her own mobile. "Can you tell Martha to meet at Starbucks across the street from South Ken station at 5? Info on AMD. Thx."

Though the text had been sent just after the bridal shower had begun at two, the time display on the phone told her that it was currently 4:37. She reckoned she had at least a twenty-minute ride on the Tube to South Kensington. She pulled Tish up to her feet, then aside, and asked her if she'd read the message.

"Yeah. So?"

"Look again," Martha told her, shoving the phone in her face. "AMD is Anne-Marie Doyle!"

"Oh!" Tish said, suddenly sounding much more sober. "Go! I'll get the leftover party favours, don't worry."

"Are you sure you don't need help loading the gifts?"

"Robert Oliver is on his way over with his new Saab and Leo's coming with a friend's SUV. We'll just make them do all the heavy lifting. Go. Find out what's up, and then tell me all about it."

Martha said, "Okay, thanks."

As she made to leave, she walked past the chair where Tish had been sitting while opening gifts. Something felt very, very wrong. Like an _unreal_ sort of wrong.

Martha turned back and stared at her sister.

"What?" Tish said.

"Really, Tish, you didn't feel anything weird happen?" Martha asked.

"For the umpteenth time, no," Tish insisted. "What are you on about, anyway?" It was clear that some of the stragglers at the party were listening, and Tish made an irritated head gesture meant to remind Martha that she wasn't free to talk about otherworldly matters just now.

"Nothing, nothing," Martha answered. "It's… sorry. I guess it's just me. Still getting used to the pregnancy. Don't worry, just… enjoy the rest of your day, okay? I'll talk to you later."

Martha snuck out of the tea house with her things before her mother noticed, and had a chance to stop, or interrogate, her.

* * *

><p>When Martha came to the curb and pressed the button to cross the busy road, she could already see the Doctor sitting at a table inside the Starbucks, next to a window, sipping something. Across from him sat a small, frail-looking blonde girl who had a small cup in front of her, at which she was staring intently but not touching. She hurried across and burst through the door, and slid into the chair beside the Doctor.<p>

"Hi," she said, at a bit of a pant. "What did I miss?"

"Erm," he answered uneasily. "Martha, this is Betsy Doyle, Anne-Marie Doyle's cousin. Betsy, this is Martha Jones, my partner."

The girl barely looked up from her coffee and nodded. "Hi. Nice to meet you," she said almost inaudibly.

Martha got the feeling that she hadn't missed anything at all, that the girl was still getting up the nerve to talk. She wished she hadn't come in with such gusto.

"Hello, Betsy," she said gently. "Sorry I'm late."

Betsy just took a deep breath and sighed, never looking up.

"You know, if you aren't up for this, we can meet up tomorrow," the Doctor said. "I want you to give us the information, but not if it's going to stress you out this much. If you need more time, Martha and I can…"

Abruptly, the very quiet girl reached out and clasped one of the Doctor's hands between hers. "No, please don't leave." For the first time, she made solid eye contact with him, and he read tremendous worry on her face.

"Okay, okay," he said, patting her hands with his free one. "We're not leaving. Just… in your own time."

Betsy took another deep breath, then exhaled. Then, as if she felt it would give her courage, she took a big swig of whatever was in her Starbucks cup, then set it down on the table rather harder than strictly necessary.

"Okay, so I was at Anne-Marie's rehearsal dinner," she said quite suddenly in rapidfire fashion. The Doctor and Martha both reacted to this with mild surprise. "Everyone was there – the wedding party, my entire family. And for once, she was happy about everything."

"Right," said Martha. "There was an account of that in the news."

"But you don't know Anne-Marie," Betsy said. "She's been a prima donna her whole life, and this bride thing has just added to it. The engagement party was all wrong, and the bridal showers, both were all wrong. Harrod's screwed up her registry – even though they didn't – and she's had the gown altered four times!"

"Blimey," commented Martha.

"But just this once," Betsy continued. "She was happy about everything. She was especially wound up over the wine before going into the restaurant, and I think she was just _expecting_ it to be all wrong, just like everything else in her life. But it wasn't, and as we left the restaurant, she was…"

"She was what?" the Doctor asked.

"She was ecstatic over it. Like, ridiculously happy. Maybe she'd had a few, I don't know, but she was just going bonkers over the wine. One of the groomsmen then suggested that they all continue the celebration at a club nearby, and while he was holding court, everyone momentarily turned their attention to him, and away from Anne-Marie. Except for me. I watched her."

"And what happened?" he wanted to know. His brow was furrowed, his tone gentle and neutral.

Betsy smiled weakly and trained her gaze back upon the cup in front of her. She chuckled bitterly. "This is the part that's barmy."

"I'll believe you – whatever you say," he assured her. "You just have to trust me."

She looked at him, noticed the seriousness, kindness in his eyes, and nodded appreciatively. A long silence passed before Betsy took another empowering swig, and began talking again.

"Her whole body froze. And for a couple of split seconds – not even a full second, I shouldn't think – she went sort of… one-dimensional."

"One-dimensional?" asked the Doctor.

"Go on," encouraged Martha. She shifted in her chair so as to lean forward more. Something Betsy had said had caught her acute attention.

"Yes, one-dimensional, like she was flat. Or… like she was just an image."

"Whoa," he said.

"And then… and then…" Betsy said, her voice beginning to break. "And then she turned blue. But not her skin, like a Smurf, more like… one-dimensional, opaque blue, you know? Like when your computer gets a virus or something, and it blips off to a blue screen."

The Doctor looked at Martha, expecting her to be staring back at him with the same quizzical expression as he had.

But she wasn't looking at him. She was leaning further forward. "So, like, she became a person-shaped cut-out, which was entirely computer-screen blue."

"Yeah."

"Then what happened?" Martha asked.

"Then she disappeared."

"Did you look away?" asked the Doctor. "Even for a second?"

"Why would I do that? I was so stunned, I couldn't even move. She disappeared. Blip. Gone."

"Like when you turn off the screen?" he wondered.

"Yeah."

"Did she say anything as this was happening to her?"

"No, she was frozen."

"And you say the whole episode took only a couple of seconds?"

"Yes. It was so fast, I didn't have time to act or speak. I'm not even sure I know what I saw…"

"You saw what you saw," said Martha. "I'm sure of it, even if you're not."

Betsy blinked at her a few times in surprise. "Thanks."

"Is there anything else?" the Doctor asked her.

"No, that's all I know."

"Okay. Just one more question, Betsy," the Doctor said. "Why is your family so hush-hush about this? You're the only one who's come forward, or who will even agree to speak at all to us."

She cleared her throat uneasily. "I told my uncle my story, Anne-Marie's dad. He called me a nutter, and told my dad, who told my uncle Kent, who's a therapist. They're all convinced I've gone insane – they even had an intervention so I'd agree to let my uncle treat me. And when the police started their investigation, I was told not to say a word to the them – uncle Kent threatened to have me committed. When you lot came along, I reckon they thought it was just too risky to give any more information, having a loose cannon in the family and all. I suppose they're afraid it will ruin the family's reputation or something. I don't know - they just wouldn't let me talk."

"Maybe just as well you waited, and called us," Martha decided. "The police wouldn't have known what to do with this information anyway."

"You're not the police?"

Martha realised she'd slipped, and looked at the Doctor for help.

* * *

><p>Betsy made an excuse and left after the Doctor finished telling her about their special status as independent investigators, not answering to any particular organisation. And yes, sometimes they handled <em>unusual<em> cases like hers, but they were not "for hire" per se, they were just...

He could tell she didn't believe him and that she was uncomfortable after that, but Martha had done a good job convincing her that they could be trusted anyhow. Or at least, she _seemed_ convinced when she left.

As soon as she was gone, Martha moved round the table and took her place across from the Doctor.

"Oh, have I got a story to tell you," she said.

"I figured as much," he said. "You're acting all… buzzy."

"That thing that happened to Anne-Marie… it happened to Tish today too."

"What?" he asked, more loudly than he should. "What? How?"

"Shhh," Martha said. "Don't worry, she didn't disappear."

"Oh, good. I'd have hoped that's the first thing you'd have told me upon entering."

"And she never froze. But she did go slightly one-dimensional for a moment, and then it seemed like there was static."

"Like bad reception from the TV?"

"More like when the monitor's cable isn't quite plugged into the CPU correctly," she mused. "Like I said to Betsy, she was a one-dimensional cut-out of a human being, then she had black and white lines for a second, and then nothing. Back to normal."

"Blimey! Did anyone else see?"

"No-one else said anything," she told him. "Must have been too subtle for normal human perception. But I definitely saw it."

"Isn't it fun being us?"

"Oh, and I got a bad tingle walking past the chair where it happened. Doctor, I think we're in serious trouble now. We've got to warn her."

"No, don't do that," he said. "Not yet."

"Why the hell not?" she asked, trying to stay calm.

"Because. What was she doing when it happened?"

She thought for a second. "Erm, she was opening her naughty gifts from her university friends."

"Was she in some kind of fit of excitement?"

Martha exhaled with her eyes wide. "Ohhh," she said. "I get it."

"Yeah."

"Anne-Marie was all frenzied about the wine," Martha said, eyes still wide with realisation. "Linnea Mays was headed out on her hen night, and Amanda Finneran was doing a giggly bouquet-toss thing with her sister. And Tish was falling all over herself because of some obscene thing in a box that came from Amsterdam."

"To each bride her own," he sighed. "Trouble is, we don't know what kind of excitement could trigger this thing. If she gets worked up into a panic over it, that might actually be worse."

Martha took a deep, cleansing breath. The smell of fresh coffee assailed her nostrils, and she made a mental note to stand up and get a decaf americano as soon as they were finished with their conversation.

"Okay, so… the brides get excited," she began, trying to delineate the data. "And something snatches them when they are all gonzo over something, then leaves an energy signature from outside this reality. But not all excitable young women are subject to it – only the ones who buy their wedding gown at Audacious Attire. We know that the computer that keeps Audacious Attire's records has been tampered with, also from outside reality. We know that there's a secret encrypted e-mail account sending eight million e-mails per week, targeting certain girls, and the e-mails are all wedding-related, probably designed to generally heighten excitement in the brides…"

"Oh yeah!" the Doctor exclaimed. "I'd forgotten about that part. You're probably right!"

"But we also suspect that the tampering is coming from _within_ the computer itself."

"Right."

"Is the computer possessed?" she asked, not necessarily of him. "Wouldn't a daemon entity come from outside this reality?"

"Yes, but we know it's some being from the Phlotigo galaxy doing this, not a daemon. But you're forgetting, the Phlotigo is in our reality."

"Okay, so could an intangible Phlotigo being be possessing the computer somehow?"

"They would certainly be capable," he answered. "But…"

"…both the beings and the computer itself are in this reality," she finished. "Damn it."

"Yeah."

"And it's making the victims behave like a computer, as a result? No, that's not quite it…"

"It's something _living_ and _conscious_…" he mused.

"…but not in our reality…"

"…something is literally operating and pulling strings, _living_ somewhere…"

"...possibly somewhere tangible?" she wanted to know.

"Yes, possibly and it's a place..."

"…where it can manipulate Fiona Hart's computer…"

"…not just her computer, though…"

"…her data," Martha said with some finality.

Their eyes locked.

"Something living outside this reality is turning these girls into data."

"It's downloading them."

"And it just occurred to me _how," _he announced.


	14. Chapter 14

**I have a very clear idea where this story is headed; it's been outlined from the beginning (which is not always the case with my stories). But for some reason, I've never done more re-writes than I've been doing with this one! I know what story I want to tell, but it's taking a tremendous amount of trial-and-error to decide how to tell it. This is one of the reasons I've been so slow! And this chapter was no exception!**

**This chapter makes a bigger jump forward in time than any previous chapter. We're joining the story now two months after the bridal shower, and the day when the Doctor and Martha met Betsy at Starbucks, and the Doctor suddenly realizes _from where_ the Phlotigo being is doing its dirty work. A lot of this chapter is narrative, explaining what's been going on over the past two months, how the pieces are starting to take shape. I hope you don't find it too tedious; I figured another four chapters of investigation (which at this point would be me, as a writer, spinning my wheels) would be even worse!**

**I am still trying to keep certain things a secret, so, if by doing so, I have made the pseudo-science too confusing, I apologize. I've been known to do that on occasion. Just ask, if you have questions!**

* * *

><p><span>TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE WEDDING<span>

For two months, Martha had been following Tish to any and all wedding-related events: tastings with the caterer, sampling wines with the Sommelier, ordering the cake, renting linens, the second fitting for the wedding gown, interviewing officiants, Dana's bridesmaid dress alteration, meeting with the florist, scouting out locations for the rehearsal dinner…

And Tish had not protested, because day or two after the bridal shower, Martha had explained to her what exactly had happened at the shower: Tish's outline had blipped like a flat piece of data, a scenario that had been corroborated by Betsy Doyle, and she and the Doctor had concluded that girls were being "downloaded" somehow.

But the idea of human beings converted to data was not what bothered Tish the most.

"They're using _excitement _to target us? How do you mean?" she asked Martha, incredulous, with a wrinkled nose.

"The type of hysteria that comes from a bride leaves a particular type of energy signature," Martha explained as best she could. "Somehow, this things feeds on it, or is attracted to it... or possibly just _uses _it to locate people."

She and the Doctor had spent a lot of time over the past two months pulling apart the data they had, analyzing Fiona Hart's computer, and taking energy samples with the sonic screwdriver and testing them in the TARDIS' digital power monitors. They had found, among other things in all the debris, that a loosely-concocted combination of what amounted to hope, love, nervousness, nostalgia and narcissism left a fairly specific trail in the atmosphere that could be targeted by the Phlotigo.

"So, I'm at risk anytime I get excited?" Tish asked, with the same wrinkle.

"No, no," Martha said, understanding the subtext of the question. "Just when you're excited about your wedding. And the closer it gets, the bigger the risk."

"But wait, didn't you tell me that _you_ can now detect energy signatures because of your new powers, or whatever?" Tish asked poking Martha lightly in the stomach. "Why wouldn't you have known this before?"

"The Phlotigo signature was so much stronger than the trails the girls were leaving behind, that it's all we focused on for a while," Martha answered. "Plus, the Doctor reckons that I might not have been able to feel them anyway, since I'm basically still human."

Tish sighed. "Blimey, there's a phrase I thought I'd never hear come out of your mouth."

Martha ignored her. "So," she said, clapping her hands. "That means someone, namely me, has to keep you calm."

"All right, that's fair," Tish agreed. "But what if you can't?"

"I've got alien talents now, plus a mobile phone," Martha shrugged. "If I can't haul you out of trouble, I know who to call. Can't say the same for mum or Dana."

But she did not feel as nonchalant as she acted.

* * *

><p>The TARDIS had also spent short periods over the two months hovering in the Phlotigo galaxy, scanning planets and pulling data from afar. They had not left the TARDIS to go wandering, gathering info first-hand, as the Doctor did not want to risk capture nor injury with Martha. This had irritated her mightily, but he didn't let her argue very much. They'd got the culprit narrowed down to one sector, but the galaxy, they found, was expanding at a rate faster than normal, and so their job grew in difficulty with every single hour. All they had was a rapidly degrading signal in the TARDIS' machinery and a system of trial-and-error, trying to find a match.<p>

They were able, though, to replenish their samples, as another bride, Heather Gentry, had been "kidnapped" during that time as well, and they'd slipped onto the crime scene after the police had gone.

Unfortunately, the story began to receive considerable media attention as a serial crime spreading through London.

"Damn it," Martha had cursed when she saw the BBC report, while sitting at Tish's kitchen table, learning from a manual how to fold cloth napkins into various types of birds. "This is all we need."

"Isn't this a good thing?" asked Tish.

"No, because national attention means people will be watching. That means the police will start to push harder and tighten up their investigation, which will make it harder for the Doctor and me to get in and do any of the types of probing we need to do. They might start to notice us, since now three out of the four families have seen us. They'll think we're involved with the crimes, which means we won't be able to come within a mile of any of the crime scenes without a perception filter."

"A what?"

Martha thought about what she had said. She had never heard nor spoken the phrase _perception filter_ before, but there they were. She had _absorbed _the concept somehow, though at this stage, she didn't need to ask how. The thin cloak that allowed things to go unnoticed, like a random police box parked in the middle of a city park with people jogging past, it was now part of her internal lexicon. She chuckled to herself, and told Tish, "Never mind."

In the end, the details, though mysterious, of the disappearing brides did not prove gruesome enough to capture the public imagination. Much to the Doctor and Martha's relief, the story remained on the periphery of mainstream news, before disappearing entirely after four days.

But the biggest revelation was the _outside reality_ phenomenon. Something from this reality was living and operating in a different reality, affecting this tangible reality through intangible means. _Where_ was this being from the Phlotigo hiding? And _how _was it using Fiona Hart's computer to do its evil?

Once they'd talked through it in that Starbucks after Betsy Doyle had left, and the Doctor had given her his theory, it made perfect sense. Then, it just became a matter, once again, of pinpointing a signature. But it wasn't really energy they were trying to nail down, it was more like a code to crack. Lines and lines and lines _and lines_ of digital code, unique to a being (or possibly a group of beings) from an expanding galaxy, whose planet of origin they had not yet worked out. If they could find that, they could capture it, but it was a needle in a barn full of haystacks.

And so, they began working on a solution. And it was daunting. Very daunting. They couldn't simply use existing technology, and "tweak" it to work for their purposes. This was a bigger job, by far, than any mere software could execute. It wasn't a bigger job than a Time Lord could execute with a TARDIS and a quasi-Time Lord companion at his disposal, but blimey, it was going to take a lot of time.

* * *

><p>When Tish's hen night rolled round, two weeks before the wedding date, the job still wasn't finished. The event had been their unofficial deadline for pulling together what they needed to extract the Phlotigo being from its cubby hole outside of reality, since the potential excitement definitely warranted a bit of worry. But one week out, it became amply clear that it was not going to happen in time.<p>

So, all week, they had taken turns being frantic over the hen night. Martha beat herself up over having taken the lead on the shower so that Dana could take the lead in planning the hen party. She could have planned something lower-key, and not so public, and avoid the possibility of over-exciting her sister. She knew intellectually that there was no real way she could have foreseen this situation, even with Time Lord senses, but it didn't help. The Doctor fretted over protocol, and how Martha would get Tish out of harm's way without arousing suspicion or working Tish up even more, in the process.

Their stopgap was to build a second sonic screwdriver. It was a tool that Martha could use now, without having to ask the Doctor to tell her the settings, and made her feel a little less helpless. But she couldn't really imagine a scenario in which Tish's life came into danger, and Martha could use the sonic to get her out of it. A sonic screwdriver couldn't abate Tish's excitement, it couldn't teleport her out of the danger, and without the proper code and frequency (which was the problem in the first place), it might not be very useful in blocking the Phlotigo being from downloading her, if the opportunity arose.

But Martha had it with her in her purse when she emerged from changing into her party clothes for the evening. The Doctor smirked. She looked down at her outfit and scowled. She was wearing a pair of straight, black knee-length shorts and some black sandals with wide high heels. On top, she wore a tight black tee-shirt with the word "Bridesmaid" spelled out in puffy silver glitter across her chest.

"Where did you find one of those in your size?" he asked.

"I didn't," Martha answered bitterly. "I had to go find a black tee-shirt _in my size_, and then Dana did the lettering. But only _after_ I told her that I would absolutely not wear a maternity shirt that said 'designated driver.'"

_Her size, _in fact, had grown considerably over the last two months. It was now impossible for her to wear virtually anything, barring large tee-shirts and some pyjama bottoms, not made specifically for women in her condition.

The Doctor laughed, and said, "Well, you look very cute. Very sparkly." He crossed to her and planted a kiss on her forehead.

She sighed. "I just wish I didn't have to be…"

"What?"

"The responsible one," she said. She _was_, in fact, the designated driver by default. But she was also commenting on the fact that tonight represented, by far, the most dangerous situation to date, as far as Tish's safety went, and she was the only party guest who knew anything about it, or could do anything about it. Maybe.

He nodded sympathetically. "It's our burden. Sometimes when weird stuff happens, we're it. You and me."

"I know."

"I'm just glad it's not only _me_," he said, hugging her.

"Me too."

He pulled back. "At least you'll be able to let go of some of it in a few months," he reminded her, patting the bump through her _bridesmaid_ tee-shirt. "The inner-turmoil-in-the-guts-of-a-Time-Lord stuff, anyway."

"I know."

"I mean, it'll be replaced by the inner-turmoil-in-the-guts-of-a-mother stuff, but at least that's standard human angst that you don't have to keep secret."

"I was just really hoping we'd have this taken care of by now," she told him. "And that's not an accusation, Doctor, it's just… I'd sort of counted on having this thing extracted and on a one-way space pod to an intangible prison by now. It was one of the things keeping me sane. And Tish too."

Once again, he nodded sympathetically. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," she said. "I wish I could have been more of a help to you."

"You have been a help to me, trust me, Martha," he said. "What we're doing is huge. We're scouring _two_ enormous planes of energy and code for one intangible being. I mean, between scanning an expanding galaxy and trying to pull encrypted data from the…"

"I know. I guess it was wishful thinking."

"It's just a big, big job."

"Yep," she said curtly, looking at the floor.

He stared at her for a few moments, wishing he could say the right thing. Failing that, he asked, "What time do you have to be to Leo's to pick up the drunk bus?" She was going to borrow her brother's SUV in order to collect the party guests, and then pour them out into their front gardens at the end of the night.

"In about fifteen minutes," she answered, looking at her watch. "I'd better go."

"Want a lift?" he asked, tossing his head toward the TARDIS' instruments.

"No, thanks. I need to… gather my strength or something. A solid, don't-make-eye-contact jaunt on the Tube will do me some good. It's an easy place to be pensive. The walls of the tunnel rushing by can be downright hypnotic."

"Okay. Why don't you ring when you're done and I'll meet you at Leo's so he can have his car for work tomorrow, and you don't have to take the Tube back by yourself in the middle of the night."

She rolled her eyes at the protectiveness, but agreed.

"Actually, Martha, ring if you need _anything_."

"I will."

"If you _see _anything…"

"I know, Doctor," she told him, cracking a smile. "I could say the same to you!"

"True," he admitted. "And I'll be here at the workbench, trying to find a loophole."

"Yeah, good luck with that," she said with a kind of sarcastic wisdom. She kissed him on the cheek and walked out of the TARDIS with a little wave.

* * *

><p>The Doctor wandered over to the console. He plopped on the stool and scratched the back of his head nervously. For the umpteenth time over the past week, he asked himself how he could speed up the process. Where was that <em>loophole<em> he'd mentioned to Martha? How could he make the needle pop out of the haystack? What weird makeshift mixture of mystic energy and technology could he use to make this problem disappear?

Deciding to think about another angle for a bit, hoping to clear his mind of the immediate problem, he pulled up one of the metal floor panels and went down, digging in the storage area underneath the console room. He emerged with Fiona Hart's CPU, which neither he nor Martha had bothered to touch in a couple of months. Just because other considerations had taken over their lives, it didn't make the question of Fiona's computer any less important.

They understood how the Phlotigo being had been using Fiona's computer to contact the brides via Fiona's sales records and e-mail account. They now understood that the hundreds of e-mails concerning florist rebates and limited edition cake designs were intended to build excitement in the brides, to create the kind of energy that the Phlotigo being needed in order to zero in on the women. They even understood, now that they roughly knew the being's hiding place, how it could continue doing its evil work, even while Fiona's computer was held hostage in the TARDIS. But they did not understand what Fiona's computer had to do with the actual downloading of the women themselves.

He decided that a practical course of action, until something cleverer took hold, would be to connect Fiona's computer to the TARDIS console, and have the TARDIS' machinery monitor it. They could, perhaps, wait for another abduction and then see what kind of activity there was in the CPU at the moment of the disappearance. It was a tactic that did not entirely appeal to him – waiting for something terrible to happen to someone else before taking action, but he told himself that it, like Martha's sonic screwdriver, was simply a stopgap. He wasn't going to hang all his hopes on this, or give up looking at other methods.

He installed the CPU to interface with his own monitor on the console. Once again, he looked through the bills of sale, hacked into her contacts, disturbingly seeing more and more ridiculous numbers of e-mails being sent out to different women, including Tish. Predictably, he saw that the fourth bride's e-mails had stopped on the day she disappeared.

Then, he pulled up the Audacious Attire website. He clicked through some of the pictures of wedding gowns, party dresses and special costumes. He didn't see anything unusual. Until, that is, he clicked on a link which led him to photographs of the brides in their gowns. He recalled Martha mentioning that the girls looked uncomfortable in the photos, and also that Tish had not been asked to pose for a photo, even though the website said that all brides were asked. But it hadn't seemed direly important at the time, so that bit of information had gone by the wayside.

But now he could see what she meant. All the girls that he recognised were there; Amanda Finneran, Linnea Mays, Anne-Marie Doyle and Heather Gentry, as well as others whom he didn't recognise. They all looked pained, as though they were being forced to stand a certain way and smile.

"What's the game, eh?" he muttered to himself.

But _the game_ was beginning to take shape in his mind. The girls, the Phlotigo, the hiding place outside reality, Fiona Hart's computer, the e-mails…

"Oh, I am so thick!" he said, gritting his teeth.

With a newfound determination, he pulled out his own sonic screwdriver, the original, and aimed it at the screen. A silver sheen seemed to flow across the screen and then disappear. Then, miniscule lines of code began to appear on the screen, again in silver, barely visible to the naked eye.

"Ohhhh," he exclaimed, almost with admiration. "Clever, clever, clever. A _digital_ perception filter. You sneaky little bastard."

He and Martha had seen this page because they had special senses, more or less immune to a perception filter. Tish had been able to see it because Martha brought it to her attention. But he doubted whether anyone else who looked at the website had ever noticed that particular link.

Probably including Fiona Hart.

"Thick thick thick!" he shouted, now standing, pounding at his temples with both hands. "The computer is just a... a source of ammunition. Oh, why? Why didn't I see it? Knocking about with Fiona Hart's _computer_, we haven't been checking into her _website_!"

How could he make that needle pop out the haystack? By going to the source. Because if he was right, and Fiona really didn't know those pictures were there, then who put them there?

"Oh, Martha," he said to empty space. "I've found our loophole!"

He threw back the handbrake with a purposeful flourish, and moved the TARDIS across town.


	15. Chapter 15

TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE WEDDING, THAT EVENING

A bell sounded as the Doctor opened the door to Audacious Attire, trying not to seem too anxious. On cue, Fiona Hart emerged from the back room, looking exasperated. "Hi. Can I help you?"

She was frazzled, it was clear. Odd and frumpy as she was, she had always been relatively well-kempt, presentable for her customers. Today her shirttail was out and her hair was stringy as though she hadn't washed or brushed it in several days.

"Oh, is this a bad time?" asked the Doctor. He was perhaps being a bit rude, but he was probing; what was wrong with her?

"No, no, I'm sorry," she said, softening. "I'm just a bit… wait, don't I know you?"

"Yes, we've met before," he admitted.

"You're Martha Jones' fiancé," she said.

"Yes."

She glanced back toward the room from which she had come, and fidgeted a little. "Has she changed her mind about buying a gown here?"

"Well, no…" the Doctor said. "Are you all right? I'm sorry – you just seem preoccupied."

She sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm being a bad hostess." She smoothed out her clothes and stood up straight. "You have my undivided attention."

"No, no," he insisted. "Don't worry about it. Is there anything I can do?"

She smirked, and her shoulders sagged sheepishly. "Do you know anything about computers?"

"As it happens…"

"Really?"

"Yep," he answered confidently. "Sort of my specialty. What's going on?"

"I've just got a new one, and I'm having some trouble with it," she told him. "Would you mind taking a look?"

"Not at all."

She led him through to the dark, rough room full of shoe boxes and furniture in disrepair, where he had snuck twice before without her knowing. He followed her into the little office and she indicated a brand-new computer sitting on the desk where her old one, the one currently sitting mostly dormant in the TARDIS, used to sit.

"This is a nice one," the Doctor commented, sitting down in the office chair. "State of the art."

She scoffed. "It ought to be," she said. "My old one was stolen – thank heaven it was insured."

"Stolen?" he asked innocently.

"Mm," she muttered. "During a delivery. A delivery man I'd never seen before came through the front, not the back, like usual, and he mucked up one of my gowns – I should have known then. Turned out it was just a ruse, a distraction. He must have had an accomplice because after he left, I came back here to resume my work, and everything was gone!"

"Wow," he said, eyes wide. "The things that happen in the city."

"Yeah. I called the police, and gave them the description of the delivery man, but truth be told, I didn't get a good look at him."

"Well, the important thing is, insurance covered a new computer, eh?"

"That's true," she shrugged.

"So what's gone wrong with this one?" he asked.

She briefly explained the roadblock that kept arising each time she attempted to update her website. The Doctor did a few keystrokes and could see immediately that the problem she was experiencing was a fairly straightforward, completely non-alien issue with the server.

But he didn't tell her that. Instead, he took this opportunity and asked, "Who designed this website?"

"I did it myself," she told him. "I couldn't see the point of hiring a web designer."

"Mm. When?"

"A couple of years ago," she guessed.

He clicked through a few more screens. "How did you set up the domain?"

"I used a company called Rebel-dot-com," she told him. "You can set up and design your own website using their tools."

"Is it free?"

"No," she told him. "I pay them ten pounds per month to keep myself online. It's totally worth it – my business doubled after I started selling through the site, and they have never upped the fee."

"Do you have paperwork for it?"

"Er, yes," she said, looking at him sideways. "How will that help?"

"Oh, just… you know, lines of code, things like that," he answered. And actually, it was the truth.

She crossed to a tall filing cabinet and pulled a bundle of papers from the top drawer. "These are the bills from each month since I began the site," she said, handing over a dossier.

This month's bill yielded no particular information, other than the price of keeping the website going, and that her account had never gone past-due. He flipped back to the very first page in the bundle, and found the set-up paperwork and contract.

And then there it was. Under some of the information concerning the domain, pass codes and digital signals, the Doctor spotted a jumble of symbols decidedly not of this world. Mixed in with letters and numbers appeared a mash of squiggly lines with dots and tiny triangles – numeric signature codes from the Phlotigo Galaxy. Bingo.

He handed the sheet to her. "Look at this sheet," he said. "Tell me what you see."

She examined it. Her eyes roved over it slowly, then slowly again. She handed it back to him and said, "I don't understand any of it. This is why I sell dresses and don't design video games. I can match colours and point and click well enough to put together my website, and that's it."

"Really? You don't see anything unusual at all on this page?" He handed it to her again.

"I wouldn't know what I'm looking for," she told him, staring at it once more.

"Exactly," he muttered.

* * *

><p>He left Audacious Attire with Miss Hart's promise that if Martha decided to buy her wedding gown there, she could have it for a quarter the price, since the Doctor had refused any payment for his services. Having made a few keystrokes, fixing the glitch with the server, he had put her computer and website back in working order, and had made the very reserved Fiona Hart properly smile and laugh. He didn't see any good coming from showing her the pictures of brides on her website veiled by the digital perception filter, nor in blocking her progress in building the part of the website she <em>knew<em> about. His beef was with the hidden bits, and the less Miss Hart knew about it, he reckoned, the safer she'd be.

He also left with Fiona's website startup paperwork in his pocket. A little slight-of-hand could be a very good friend to him, on occasion.

The important thing was: the paperwork had given him the proper code to pinpoint the Phlotigo being they'd been hunting. In the vastness of space and cyberspace, they now had their answer. And just like the forbidden bits of the website, the symbols on the page had been adorned with a strong perception filter, which let Fiona go on, oblivious as ever.

He returned to the TARDIS and fired up Fiona's old computer, and hacked into her veiled e-mail. He wanted to know how much time they had before another girl got stolen and pulled into whatever it was that this Phlotigo thing had in store.

His breath hitched when he looked at the outgoing mail.

He dialled Martha's mobile number. She did not answer; her voice mail picked up.

"Martha!" he shouted, pacing back and forth on the metal floor. "Damn it, I wish you would pick up! I found the code! I worked out how to nail down the Phlotigo being – we can extract it, but I'll need a couple of days or so to write the software to do it. Meantime, I checked the hidden e-mails and messages to Tish have increased literally exponentially over the past four days – the thing is targeting her next! Do you hear me, Martha? _Tish is next_. Get her out of that party, and keep her calm! Ring me when you get this message… oh to hell with it. I'm coming to find you!"

* * *

><p>Only two hours into their hen night extravaganza, already Martha was the only one <em>not<em> well on her way to ploughed. Nevertheless, she danced with the best of them, determined not to let _alcohol_ be the make-or-break factor which let her have fun or not. She was in a club with people and music she liked, it was an opportunity to cut loose. Besides, if she were drinking, she wouldn't be able to keep Tish safe.

They decided as a group to take a breather and go to the bar for another round. Tish was wearing a white tank top that said "Bride" in large silver letters, so she received quite a bit of attention. Some young men nearby bought her a shot with an obscene name, the full effect of which required her to get down on her knees and drink the shot off a stool with no hands, out of a wide-mouthed shot glass, guaranteeing a mess of white cream covered her mouth and chin. The guys reasoned it was her "last chance" to do such a thing, and laughed hysterically, along with Tish and the girls. Martha rolled her eyes as she watched, but she had to admit, she was enjoying herself. Mostly because she was glad it wasn't her.

Shortly after that, Dana produced a "Bucket List" for the bride, things she needed to get out of her system before she got married. It was a laundry list of dares, a scavenger hunt of crazy tasks for Tish, mostly involving unsuspecting blokes and bodily contact.

This made Martha very, very nervous, especially as Tish went down the list and squealed with delight as she discussed the "rules" of the game with the other party guests. Tish knew she wasn't supposed to get too worked up, but with every free shot, her inhibitions fell a little, and Martha's defences went up.

When Martha happened to look to her right and spied the Doctor tumbling through the door, Tish was trying to pop a balloon by slamming her breasts up against an all-too-game blond guy in a t-shirt advertising an Australian beer, as the other girls, and the guy's friends, cheered them on.

Martha waved her arms so he'd see her, but she was reluctant to walk away from her sister. He saw her and came over, looking frantic.

"Did you get my message?" he asked, breathless.

"No," she said. "I can't hear my phone in here!"

The Doctor's desperate expression momentarily dissolved as he spotted Tish engaged in this truly compromising act. The guy's arms were now around her and he was pulling her against him in a suggestive rhythm, and Tish was not protesting.

"What the hell is she doing?" the Doctor asked.

Martha had the Bucket List in her hand and handed it to him. He looked it over. "This is not good."

"I know."

"No, I mean, this is _really_ not good," he insisted. "I just checked out Fiona's computer. Tish is next!"

Martha's face seemed to melt slowly into a stupefied gape, and then she put her hands on her hips. "Oh, Doctor. Are you sure?"

"Sure as I ever am," he assured her. "E-mails to Tish have increased exponentially, just the like the other girls, right before they went missing!"

At that, one of the girls grabbed Martha by the arm and breathed rum in her face as she exclaimed, "Come on, Martha! Tish is gonna do the hokey-pokey!"

"What? She can't do that!"

But the girl had already scuttled away, as had Tish and Dana and all the others. Martha cursed and chased after her, but Tish was already more or less on the stage. She was standing in a line with five other girls who were either wearing _bride_ tee shirts, or dressed in standard semi-slutty club attire and a wedding veil. All of the hen party guests-of-honour were set to perform, all grinning from ear to ear, and hugging like they'd known each other forever. The alcohol-lubricated crowd was cheering loudly.

Martha rushed for the stage. "Tish! You can't, it's not safe!"

"Oh lighten up, Martha!" Tish shouted back, playfully and unsteadily kicking her pointed boot out at her sister. "It's just the bloody hokey-pokey!"

"Allllll right, ladies and gentlemen," a man's voice said, utterly drowning out any noise that Martha could make. "It's time to give these hens their last hurrah! But this isn't just any old hokey-pokey… no, this is an old favourite with a twist!"

Two muscular men emerged from the wings of the stage carrying large plastic rubbish bins. From them, they pulled an array of embarrassing items and handed them to the girls.

"Girls, just do what comes naturally!" the announcer said.

To one girl, they handed a three-foot-long, novelty paddle with a wooden handle and red rubber body. She turned her backside to the crowd and coquettishly rapped herself on the bum. To another girl, they handed a three-foot-tall plastic replica of a Jack Daniels bottle. She awkardly pretended to drink from it. Another girl received a whip, with a comically long black grip and five pink leather-like tails hanging from the end. She affected a harsh air, and cracked the whip lightly against the stage in front of her. Another girl was handed a leopard-print hood with two little ears, and a matching velcro bustier. She put them on over her tank top and pony tail, then meowed and clawed at the crowd. The fifth girl got a set of novelty handcuffs, each ring trimmed with light blue fluffy feathers, and the chain was about two feet long. She fastened her hands into it, then held them aloft for everyone to see.

With each absurd, embarrassing thing, there was a great cheer from the audience, particularly from the men.

And then the _coup de grâce_. Out from one of the bins emerged another comically large, embarrassing implement of delightful torture. It was a thirty-inch, peach-coloured, inflatable penis. Tish covered her mouth with her hands and screamed in delight. As she took it from the muscular man who was holding it out to her suggestively, the crowd went aboslutely bonkers.

Martha, still standing at Tish's feet just below the stage, buried her face in her hands and groaned, "Oh, Tish," not that anyone could hear her.

And as she was looking away for just a few moments, a collective gasp filled the room.

When Martha looked up, the space Tish had been occupying on the stage was empty. The girls who had been standing with her, the musicians in the band, the two muscular men and the emcee were all staring, jaws agape, at the hole. The inflatable phallus was now lolling back and forth on the floor, looking suddenly a lot less threatening.

Just as the hush dissipated and the chaos began, Martha stepped up onto the stage and searched, she knew in vain, behind the curtains for her sister.

Everyone in the room was yelling, crying, asking questions or hugging. They were reporting to one another what they'd seen, what had happened, some insisting they should get the hell out of there, some insisting on calling the police. Some people were already on their phones shouting into them, some of them where photographing or videotaping the mêlée. The emcee was trying to keep everyone calm, but to no avail.

Martha returned to the front of the stage and scanned the crowd for her friends. They were standing around the table they had reserved for themselves, about two-thirds of the way between the dance floor and the bar. They were all crying and hugging, shrugging, wondering what to do. Slightly to their left, the Doctor stood. Martha could see light shining on his face as he looked down into his palm. She saw Tish's handbag open on the table next to him and she knew he was looking at her iPhone. She willed him to look up at her.

When he did, he saw desperate, frightened eyes. He wished he had good news.

Instead, he sighed and began walking slowly toward the stage. A very uneasy-looking photograph of Tish in her wedding gown had just appeared on the mysterious website.

It hadn't been there twenty seconds before.


	16. Chapter 16

**Two warnings for this chapter: **

**1) It's a lot of nonsense technobabble, but I swear it all makes a kind of sense! I don't know if any of it makes actual computer sense or scientific sense, but I felt that given what's about to happen, I needed some exposition of how the technology is going to work, even if it's fictional and/or somewhat confusing. **

**2) There's talk at the end of the chapter about fate, and stuff that happens in the previous story, _Things We Weren't Meant To Know._ If you can't understand how all of this (indirectly) puts the universe in jeopardy because of the baby Martha is carrying, just ask - I'll help you out! Or go back and "bone up" on the story of their son!**

* * *

><p><span>EVEN LATER THAT EVENING<span>

"So, we set about writing software," Martha said, stumbling into the TARDIS behind the Doctor and shutting the door. "Now that we have the code, nailed down the Phlotigo guy, we can extract him, yeah?"

He had taken her hand and dragged her out of the club before she could begin to make excuses with Tish's friends. That was fine with her; she'd never be able to explain, she could only panic and pretend to speculate with the rest of them. And every single moment wasted was another moment in which Tish was in some kind of untold danger.

"We can extract him," the Doctor said, flipping switches round the console. "But that really does nothing to help Tish. I'd been so obsessed with finding the culprit, I never actually considered the fact that we can't help the kidnapped girls that way."

"We can, though," Martha argued. "We can write extraction codes for all of them!" She was surprised to hear herself say it, but at this stage of her pregnancy, that was nothing new.

"It would take us days just to write the code for the Phlotigo," he said, stopping to look at her. He scratched the back of his head nervously, and looked away from her, casting his eyes about the room as he mulled over the situation. "And then several more days to write code for each of the missing girls. For that we'd have to take samples of highly degraded energy signatures from their homes and haunts… and at this moment, all we we _know_ are the names of four girls. You've seen that website, Martha. There are dozens of others whose names do not appear with their picture, and we have no idea how to find them!"

"Okay, okay," she replied, gesturing for him to calm down.

"Priority number one is Tish," he told her with an insistent index finger. "Priority one-point-five is the other girls. Priority two is dispatching the bad guy."

Martha pulled her brand-new sonic screwdriver from her handbag and tossed it in the air. "I'll go to Tish's flat and pick up an energy signature that we can use to extract her."

The Doctor stopped moving, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping slightly. He stared a hole into her. "Okay, great idea. Go do it." With that, he flipped a few more switches and moved the TARDIS across town to park outside Tish and Robert Oliver's flat.

There was something strange about the way he said it, but she was in no mood to waste time arguing over the tone of his voice. It was all about Tish tonight.

"I'll be back in a bit," she called out, heading toward the door. Then she stopped. "But wait – what will I tell Robert Oliver?"

"I dunno," he shrugged. He seemed distracted. He was now under the console in a cabinet, pulling wires and other various implements of technology through the small door. "Tell him she forgot something and sent you back for it."

"How do I know I won't be picking up _his_ energy as well?"

"Get it from her side of the bed."

Again, the Doctor seemed preoccupied – more so than usual – with what he was doing, and Martha wondered what was up, but didn't ask. She could feel a heated discussion brewing if she were to delve into this area right now, and even with her hormones racing, she knew it would be a bad idea to start a fight with Tish's energy floating about as converted data on a website.

"I don't know which side she sleeps on!" she protested.

"Just go look in the bedroom, Martha," he told her, irritated. "You'll probably be able to tell by what's on the night table."

She paused before going through the door. One more time, she almost asked him what the problem was, why the sudden change of demeanour, but she didn't. _Sister in danger – doing it for her. Anything could be happening to her right now…_

So she stepped out and shut the TARDIS door before she could change her mind.

* * *

><p>The Doctor felt a little guilty for rushing Martha out the door on a pointless mission, but it was for her own good. That was a phrase she hated hearing, and he knew she'd probably make him pay for it later in some way, but their tiffs never lasted terribly long.<p>

The irony was, if she weren't pregnant he wouldn't have to do this; he'd have no problem doing what he had to do, with her by his side. Also, if she weren't pregnant, she wouldn't have the Time Lord mojo she'd need to pick up on what he was doing, and be able to protest the decision he was making… all very Catch-22. All moot, since she _was_, in fact, pregnant, and he was, in fact, quite protective.

Besides, more importantly, he needed an anchor in this world. He'd have to go searching for the interface helmet - it had been ages since he'd used it.

An array of wires and cables were now plugged into the little black box on the console, which held one of the TARDIS' basic processing centres. It was the closest thing she had to a standard, run-of-the-mill CPU from the human world, although even _it_ was just a bit sentient. But that was perfect.

Because calibrating the processing centre for a Phlotigo being with a long code that needed translating from Phlotigan squiggles to Gallifreyan was a hell of a lot more difficult than getting it to process data it had been reading for over eight hundred years. His trusted ship already had much of the information she needed to convert _the Doctor_ into uploadable data. He gave the rest by concentrating hard, and blowing into a little funnel-shaped receiver. A wisp of golden air came out of his mouth and coiled in the funnel. The processor read the data, and the Doctor's energy signature code appeared on the screen in front of him. No writing necessary.

Next, he gave it an upload destination by typing in a number of other codes. He used a destination just slightly "off" from where the true destination was. The Audacious Attire website didn't have an easy upload feature, but a closely-coded movie website did. Then, he pulled up the software for the TARDIS' equivalent of a webcam, and enhanced it a bit. He calibrated the input settings to recognise the energy signature from two directions, and then input the destination code as well. He had no doubt that the TARDIS could download and output his energy code with no problem. He would remain connected with it one way or another, and even if he didn't, it would know what to do to bring him back to tangible life.

Within ten minutes of Martha leaving the TARDIS, he was finished, and she was back.

"Argh," she said, coming through the door.

"What?"

"Didn't work."

"What didn't?"

"Getting an energy sample from Tish's flat. Robert Oliver kept following me around, trying to get me to tell him what she left behind," Martha said, exasperated. "So I took this, and told him she was cold in the club. Flimsy, but it's a better excuse than the truth."

Martha held out the red cashmere cardigan she had borrowed from Tish's wardrobe. Then, something occurred to her. She pulled her sonic device from her pocket and aimed it at the sweater. But she was disappointed.

"Nothing," she sighed.

"It's probably too clean," the Doctor said. "Okay, then, I guess it's back to the drawing board. I might have some accelerant software that can help us write codes more quickly. We can try and extract the degraded signals from the other girls… you know what? I'll be right back." He turned and jogged down the hall toward the storage centres of the TARDIS.

"Er, okay," she said, blinking rapidly at his departure.

As soon as he was around the corner, he slowed down. This was going to be tough. In five minutes, he'd be back in the console room with an interfacing helmet, asking her to put it on. Once she realised what he'd done, and that he'd shuffled her off to protect her, there would be an argument. He was banking on Martha's practicality and love for her sister to get them through this, but he _couldn't_ bank on her ability to be totally rational just now. He sighed, heading for one of the second-tier equipment storage units.

* * *

><p>He was still acting weird. He was short with her, distracted, and anxious, it seemed, to get away. And it had begun happening all at once. She wondered what he'd been doing while she was in Tish's flat.<p>

She wandered over to the computer and spied the wires now hanging from the little black box, the basic processing centre. The cables all led back into the TARDIS' heart itself. If he was to begin inputting energy conversion codes from the kidnapped girls or from the Phlotigo being for extraction, then the cables would have to lead to somewhere else. They would start from some other input source, like the sonic screwdriver or one of the other data processors on the console, or even a regular computer keyboard. What was he doing, making the black box and the heart of the TARDIS interface specifically with one another this way? How would this help Tish, or anyone else?

The symbols on the screen, in Gallifreyan, showed her that the interface, whatever it was, had already been done. She took advantage of the fact that she could temporarily read his language and navigate his equipment, and called up the properties of the last function performed.

Her jaw dropped when she saw. The computer was set to make some kind of giant upload.

Primary input source: TARDIS central crux

Secondary input source: The Doctor.

Input port: Camera A

Output port: Interface helmet

Data format: Energy xfer

Destination: moviesonline/commentforum . co . uk

"Oh, you complete…" she whispered, biting her lip, instead of finishing the sentence. "Convert yourself into intangible data with the possibility of getting lost in the universe's greatest jumble of unnavigable crap, and have me sit here safely _in a helmet_? Oh, no, you don't…"

_He sent me off to Tish's flat so he could do this without my knowing!_

Her voice went up into a mocking, nasal tone as she undid the Doctor's work. "I have to save everyone all at once, and do some semi-suicidal crazy stunt that could kill me. But Martha's too fragile to join me. We're partners, but only when I say so. She can stay benignly in the cave while the menfolk bring back the damsels in distress…"

The wheels were turning in her as they never had before. She stopped for a moment, closed her eyes, and forced herself to push down the frustration that was mounting. She had brain power churning in a way that she never could have imagined before, the circuits of time and space intertwined with the machinery in front of her, blipping away within her mind, mapped out like a mental Sat-Nav. But she was still new at it, and needed to quiet her thoughts if she was going to make this work, and do it before the Doctor returned from wherever it was he'd gone.

She thought about her resources. She had her own energy to work with, and the Doctor's, now that the black box had pinpointed it for her – she wouldn't need _him_ to do anything. And she had Robert Oliver.

She thought about her needs. Some kind of storage device would be necessary, as well as tranference software to put this otherworldly program and its language into a regular Earth computer.

She thought about why she was doing it.

"Because when you love someone, sometimes you have to save him from himself," she said aloud to the TARDIS as she put a platinum-plated CD into one of the drives on the console. "And because we're a team, you, me, and the Doctor. And because I can't sit idly by and _wait _for him and my sister…"

"Who are you talking to?" he asked from behind her.

She turned and looked at him calmly, noting with annoyance the mad-looking helmet in his hand. "The TARDIS. There's been a change of plan."

"What are you doing?" he asked, his face scrunching, approaching the console.

She stood up and faced him, partly to keep him from changing or stopping the process she now had going. She put her hand out to hold him back.

"Were you _really_ going to upload yourself to the internet and leave me here to interface with that helmet?" she asked, hands on hips, toe tapping.

His mouth formed a guilty "o" shape, and his eyebrows went up. "Oh," he said, trying unsuccessfully to sound innocent. "Yeah, I was. Is that a problem?"

"Yes, it's a bloody problem!" she shouted. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?"

"I do, but I don't plan on wandering about that much, Martha. It's an in-and-out mission."

"In theory, sure," she said. "But that Phlotigo bloke is bound to see you coming, and I'm not thinking he's just going to let you come and go. How do you plan on getting all the girls to safety, all on your own? All several dozen of them?"

"Martha, I've done things like this on my own before," he insisted. "You create a diversion and go for the enemy's weakness. Then you rally the victims…"

"What _is_ the enemy's weakness?" she asked.

"Erm, he's intangible," he shrugged. He didn't really have a good answer.

"So will you be," she told him. "And Tish and all the other girls. All of you are _data_, Doctor, don't you get it? You'll have the same weakness."

"I know…"

"Data can be corrupted with a virus, dispersed, turned into an unrecognisable format… anything you're thinking of doing to him, he can do to you, too, and he's probably thought it over, Doctor. He's been floating around in that website for how long? He's been kidnapping girls – manipulating sentient data – for how long? He can manipulate _your_ sentient data too. Don't assume he can't."

"Okay, okay," he said. "I get it. So what's your point? What do you want from me?"

"How could you just jump in there, knowing what could happen, leaving me behind? I thought we were in this together!"

"We are also in _this_ together," he said, reaching out and pressing his hand against the bulge under her black _Bridesmaid_ tee-shirt. "Our job is to keep him safe. You're doing your part, clearly, so let me do mine."

"_Your part_ is throwing yourself headlong into something daft, while I wait?"

"It's rescuing the girls, including Tish, who will, as you know, play a huge role in our son's life. And we couldn't let her just languish as data, even if that weren't true, because she's family," he insisted, though gently. "And something we hadn't considered before, Martha, is this: once we start extracting girls, the Phlotigo being will find a way to stop us. He'll do everything you just said – corrupt the data, disperse it, convert it so we can't find it, and those other girls will be even more intangible, and likely lost indefinitely, at least to us. So, to do it, I have to go in there and fight the villain myself. It's dangerous. And part of _doing my part_ for our child is not letting _you_ in the way of danger."

She sighed. She was getting emotional. She very badly did not want to cry, but she couldn't hold it in. "But Doctor," she whimpered. "If you get lost in there, you'll have left us. I _cannot_ raise a child alone. Not _this _child. Maybe I could if he were a normal kid, but he's not. He's yours."

The Doctor's shoulders fell, and he looked at the floor. "Right. He's mine."

"You know how this turns out, Doctor. He's going to need so much that I can't give him."

"Yeah," he whispered.

She sniffled, but continued to speak through her tears. "And if you're lost, then it's just the two of us. I'll have this incredible kid, and no idea what to do with him, other than the normal mother stuff. I won't be able to fly the TARDIS, I might not be able to get away from whatever it is that's going to threaten us when he's thirteen, and we could both die then, and he'll never save the universe from plague. We'll never find him in that basement, and…"

"Okay, okay," he sighed. "Paradox, I know." Blimey, having her able to see the tangled web of time was becoming a liability.

"More importantly, I won't be able to show him what to do with his own brain, Doctor. I don't know how to be a Time Lord. You're the only guy – _the only one –_ who can teach him how to do that. Without that, he can't become who he's going to become."

"So what do you want? Just to extract Tish and risk letting the others get lost?"

"No, I'm coming with you."

"Martha…"

"Don't argue," she said, once again putting her hand out to stop him. "The program you just wrote is already being translated and written on a platinum disc. I'm coming with you."

"If you come with me…"

"You'll have a second set of ears and eyes, a second pair of hands, a second sonic screwdriver, a second brain, which means twice the chance of success," she said. "And if you're lost, we're both lost. All _three_ of us are lost."

He chuckled. He hadn't thought about it before, but she had. He was a brilliant man, but she was, at least for now, brilliant in the same way, and also a burgeoning mother. Angles occurred to her that didn't occur to him.

"You're saying that no matter what, the universe is in peril," he said with a smirk.

"Yes. Either way, our son is at risk, and that puts it all in jeopardy."

"Right."

"So, having considered his needs first, and realised that there is no better way, I've decided that I'd rather die with you than live without you."

This melted his hearts. Die together or live apart? To her, the choice was clear. He'd been faced with this decision before, and knew that you don't always get to say what happens in the end. But all considerations have been made for preserving their son and his personal timeline, and she was right - there was no better way. And the Doctor had to admit, if he'd made the call, he'd make the same decision. Die together.

"Okay then," he said, stepping forward. She stepped into the crook of his right arm and pressed her tear-stained face against his jacket. He hugged her tightly, then pulled his other arm up. His left hand still held the interface helmet. "But what are we going to do about this? We need an anchor."

"What do we know about Robert Oliver?" Martha asked. "He's a Systems Analyst, and he loves Tish. An expert in programming languages with a huge stake in the game."


	17. Chapter 17

**Okay, so let's just suffice it to say... I've been busy. Not saving the world from aliens, but almost as big. But I am committed to this story, and though I might be slow as God is my witness, I shall finish! Thank you to those who have stayed with me!**

* * *

><p><span>LATE THAT NIGHT<span>

Robert Oliver Ephraim paced back and forth in his home office, biting his thumbnail. One side of the room was paneled with desks and computer equipment, including two fully-functioning PCs. On one of the screens, there was a news report about the missing brides. On the other screen, there was a photo of Tish in her wedding gown, looking mightily uneasy.

On the other side of the room, there was a shapeless white sofa where no-one ever sat. Except tonight. The Doctor and Martha sat there, watching the man pace. They looked at each other a few times and shrugged. Martha felt that they had short-circuited him somehow, and neither of them knew what to do to fix him.

At last, he stopped dead in front of them and faced them. He asked, loudly, "Are you sure Tish is one of these brides?"

"Positive, Robert Oliver," Martha assured him. "I saw her disappear."

"Have the two of you gone completely mental?"

"I knew he was going to ask that," the Doctor muttered with a sigh of tedium.

"Okay, you don't have to believe us," Martha said to her future brother-in-law. "Even if you don't believe that you've got everything to lose by standing still, just believe that you've got nothing to lose by helping us. If it turns out we're a couple of nutters, then all you'll have given up is time."

Robert Oliver scoffed, then continued to pace.

Martha leaned over to the Doctor and muttered, "I thought for sure she'd have told him the truth by now."

"About you and me?" he whispered.

"Yes," she confirmed.

"Would you?" he asked her. "Look at him."

Suddenly Robert Oliver stopped pacing and stared at the screen from which Tish gazed out awkwardly. "You know," he said loudly. "I'm not supposed to see what her dress looks like. It's bad luck." He put his hands on his hips and turned to face the two visitors, as though taking them to task for this transgression.

The Doctor got to his feet. "Look, we don't have time for this," he said, taking Robert Oliver by the shoulders, as gently as he could manage. "That wedding gown is going to be… just a white dress hanging in a plastic cover on a Saturday, if you don't come to your senses soon. You're just going to have to trust us, here. _Tish is in danger_. Probably more than she's ever been in her life, or will ever be. We, Martha and I, are the only two on this planet who know what's going on and how to save her, only we can't do it without you. Well, we could, but then we might get lost as well, and you'll have to answer to Francine about _both_ of her daughters. Is that what you want?"

"No," Robert Oliver said flatly, though his eyes had widened a bit.

"Glad you see it our way." The Doctor then grabbed Robert Oliver's hand and held it, palm up. He slapped the platinum disc that Martha had made into the man's palm, and said, "You'll need this."

"What is it?"

"It's a…" the Doctor answered, searching for the right words. "Programming language."

Robert Oliver looked at the disc with curiosity. "Which one?"

"Trust me, it's not one you've ever heard of."

"I'm a Systems Analyst," Robert Oliver insisted. "Top in my field. I've heard of all of them."

The Doctor ignored his remark. "It's going to search for a certain type of _input_ data and upload it to the internet."

"And this will help Tish, how?"

"It just will," the Doctor said. "Later, ifyou want the full run-down, we'll give it to you. But for the moment, you're probably better off not knowing, okay?"

The puzzled Systems Analyst looked at the Doctor sceptically. "Is this illegal?"

The Doctor blinked several times. The question surprised him. He reckoned that if any government on Earth currently knew that this was possible, it _would _be illegal. But as things stood, there was no law specifically against it.

"No, it's not illegal," he assured Robert Oliver. And it was the truth. "Just make sure you install the langauge with the webcam running, yeah?"

"Why?" asked Robert Oliver. But, when the Doctor showed a sign of annoyance and opened his mouth to speak, Robert Oliver held up one hand and said, "You know what? Never mind. I'll just take your word for it."

* * *

><p>"Feel that?" whispered the Doctor, nudging Martha gently with an elbow. They were back, sitting side-by-side on Robert Oliver's shapeless office sofa, half an hour later.<p>

"Yeah, it's weird," she answered. "It's like I'm being split in two, but it's not unplesant. Vibrated apart, like."

"You're being _identified_," he said, eyes comically wide in mock seriousness.

"Identified as data, and appropriated by software," Martha said. "Who knew it would feel so… tingly?"

The Doctor smiled wide. "I know!"

According to the computer in front of Robert Oliver, he was currently eighty-seven per cent of the way through installing Martha's special platinum disc.

"What?" he asked, having heard the two travellers whispering to each other.

"Nothing, nothing," the Doctor said. "Just… shooting the breeze. How's it going?"

"Fine, but…"

They waited for Robert Oliver to finish. But he didn't.

"But what?" asked Martha.

"It's just… what the hell is going on? I'm sorry," he said, genuinely apologetic. "I'm just not that good at rolling with the punches, as they say. I have to know my motivation."

The Doctor let out a huge sigh and looked at Martha. Her eyes reflected pleading, worry, warning and a dozen other emotions and messages all at once, and it was impossible for him to tell exactly what she wanted him to say. But the Doctor had an idea of what to say.

"Okay, Robert Oliver, I'm going to tell you the truth about what happened to Tish," he said. Martha resisted the urge to gasp and urge him to stop talking.

"Great. Wonderful." The man swiveled in his chair to face the visitors, and crossed his arms expectantly.

Very carefully, the Doctor began, "Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?"

Robert Oliver's jaw dropped, and he gaped at the Doctor for a long few seconds. "What are you on about?" he asked at last.

"Aliens, spaceships," the Doctor said loudly, standing up. "Life outside of this planet! Creatures from other worlds!"

Robert Oliver continued to stare at the man in the suit. After another long pause, he asked, "Are you going to tell me that whatever's happened to Tish, aliens are involved?"

"Yes."

"You _have_ gone mental."

"As you like. But you wanted the truth…"

"Okay, okay," Robert Oliver said, holding up both hands in a disarmed position and turning back to the computer. "Never mind. I'll just finish the installation. No more talk of aliens. It's clear you're not willing to let me in on what's happening, so…"

The Doctor fluttered one smug eyebrow at Martha. He had expected Robert Oliver to react this way, thus ensuring that they didn't have to explain just now, but also not lying to him, and giving the appearance of trying to allow full disclosure. Because inevitably, he'd know or realise the truth someday, one way or another.

"Blimey, this thing seems to be reconfiguring some of my settings," Robert Oliver complained. "Doctor, I use this computer for work! I can't have it hiding my systems files!"

"Oh, yeah," said the Doctor. "It's all right, I'll show you how to find them again. The software is sentient, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem."

"Sentient?"

"I told you – aliens."

"Ugh, okay," Robert Oliver conceded. After a beat, he asked, "But can you at least tell me the name of the programming language?"

"It's Gallifreyan," the Doctor answered. "But you can't go spreading that around. There are some who would love to get their hands on that disc, and to be able to use this language for… well, nothing good. Decoding, worming, reconfiguring… World War Three –provoking sort of stuff. Just trust me."

"Gallifreyan?

"Yes. Keep it under your hat."

"Who are the people who want it?"

"Governments, mostly."

"Terrorists?"

"Most terrorists wouldn't know it exists. Unless… well, never mind. But the British government would try to jump on it if they got wind of the fact that you have this, and they wouldn't hesitate to mow you down to do it."

"You mean kill me?"

"Well, they'd most likely try wiping your hard drives first and/or sending in an operative either to pirate the information from your system, or sneak in and physically take the disc while you sleep. But if that didn't work, sure, yeah, they'd kill you."

"Oh, thank you so much for bringing it into my home!" Robert Oliver half-shouted. "Do you also have a spare land-mine you'd like to bury in my basement? I've got some extra room down there, next to the billiards table!"

"I tried to tell you, the less you know, the happier you'll be." The Doctor shrugged and blinked, slowly.

His calmness, smugness, angered Robert Oliver. "You are a bloody infuriating man, do you know that?"

"I've been told that," the Doctor retorted, just as calmly. Martha wondered if he understood that it was _this_ sort of attitude that was winding the other man up.

"Doctor, can we just let the man work?" she asked, reaching up to take his hand. She tugged at it and pulled him down beside her.

As if on cue, the computer gave a _ping_, indicating that the installation was complete. Robert Oliver's PC was now outfitted with the Gallifreyan programming and processing language, including detection and conversion software for compatible energy signatures – Gallifreyan life forms as input data. Martha could feel, as could the Doctor, that her essence, or more accurately, her child's essence, still a part of her body, was in the system now. Her molecules seemed to hum, and her mind seemed to be, as she had said, split in two. It was dizzying. It frightened her just a little, but also, it felt magnificently curious.

"Okay, it's done. Now what?" Robert Oliver said flatly.

"The language and software you just installed is meant to pick up compatible energy, namely, me and Martha, and convert us to data. The command to upload us directly to the internet has already been programmed in."

Robert Oliver nodded and swallowed hard.

"What we need from you is to go to the Audacious Attire website," the Doctor instructed. He began speaking very quickly, machine-gunning, in his trademark Doctorly way, information he was going to impart whether he needed to or not. "We're going to try to sneak attack, so we're not going directly to this site… we're going somewhere, well, we'll call it next door, as it were. We don't want to be seen coming – we could blow the whole thing. But sneaky is sneaky – there's more than one way to skin a cat, so we're going to try and avoid the home page altogether, and stick to the auxiliary encoded pages, but… well, I've never done this before, so I could just be working out a theory in my old noggin that really has no bearing on reality. God knows I'm good at that. Did I mention I've never done this before?"

"Doctor?" Martha interrupted. "Tick tock, love."

"Right. So, Robert Oliver, mate, we really need you now. Keep an eye on the website. Click about until you find us, and don't let us out of your sight after that. And then, stay tuned for further instructions."

"How will I do that? How do I receive instructions?" Robert Oliver's voice had risen much higher than normal. It was clear now that he was sensing danger, if nothing else, even if he didn't believe fully in what the Doctor was saying would happen.

"I'm not sure yet," he answered. "We'll find a way to display data in a way that you'll know it's meant for you. If we have to, we'll address it to you or shout it at you in a downloadable _wav_ file… just play with it. If you see a bell or a whistle, ring it or blow it. It might be us."

The overwhelmed human sighed. "Okay. I am _very_ confused."

"Good," said the Doctor, slapping him on the shoulder in a gesture of camaraderie. "I'd worry if you'd got it all in one gulp. Now, hit the upload command."

Robert Oliver squinted at the screen, and then did as asked. "I've got a dialogue box here. _Convert Gallifreyan energy signatures?_"

"Click _ok_," said the Doctor. He turned to Martha and held out his hand. "Ready?"

She nodded solemnly, then stood up, and took his hand.

"Here goes nothing," Robert Oliver said, then he clicked _ok_ on the dialogue box.

If Martha's molecules seemed to hum before, they were positively buzzing now. A million hummingbirds seemed to be fluttering against her skin, and against her bones and organs. The world went blue, her body felt condensed, she heard the Doctor shout for her to hold on, be brave…

* * *

><p>Robert Oliver watched in astonishment as his fiancée's sister and her eccentric boyfriend seemed to flatten like screen images, roll and blip like a bad television signal, then fade to blue, like a blank computer screen. And then, all at once, they vanished, and he was alone in the room.<p>

He turned to the screen which had the Audacious Attire website up, with Tish's uneasy photo. He "clicked about," as the Doctor had instructed, but saw nothing out-of-the-ordinary, no sign of the Doctor nor Martha, and certainly nothing to indicate than any data was meant for him. He'd keep browsing, though, until something happened.

"Or until it becomes amply clear that they're mucking me about and I'm a complete arse for believing them," he muttered to himself.


	18. Chapter 18

**Please excuse this chapter… for a few reasons. **

**1) It is ****the**** reason why I wrote this story! I got this idea one day, and I wanted this scene, this description of what a physical internet would be like. I started thinking about how they might get there, and the story became a monster around it… which is a good thing. **

**2) The fact that, in some ways this scene is the crux of the story, it means that the Doctor and Martha spend a bit of time talking about stuff that doesn't have much bearing on the story… I needed to have them explore a little bit, sort of for reasons that will crop up in the story later, but mostly for fun, self-indulgent reasons! Thanks for indulging me! **

**3) I don't really have any idea of how the internet works, on a digital level, so if my pseudoscience and "manifestation" talk sounds like sci-fi babble, it totally is! **

**4) Sorry for my shameless nod to the Eleventh Doctor, and specifically the extra door in the Pond house. I'm assuming that the Doctor, in every incarnation, would have done and/or said the same thing, in order to find something encrypted or hidden from normal perception.**

**5) Lastly, even I am appalled at how infrequently these updates are happening! I'm sorry for keeping you all in the dark - I don't mean to. I work on the story bit-by-bit every few days, but something keeps interrupting me. Something small, noisy and exhausting, with no respect for the ****constraints of time! It's a good thing he's cute... Anyway, please bear with me!**

* * *

><p><span>A MOMENT LATER<span>

Martha knew she must look like a complete fool standing there with her mouth open, but she couldn't help herself. The Doctor stood coolly beside her, with his hands in his pockets and one eyebrow raised.

"Wha…" she breathed. Then she caught herself. "What the hell is this?"

"This is the internet," he said to her, shrugging.

"The internet looks like a shopping mall?"

"Well, not always," he told her.

"So," she said, closing her eyes. "If you and I are now _data_, and data can move about in digital channels…"

She paused.

"Yes," he encouraged. "Keep talking." He knew her special senses were kicking in, and the answers were forming in her brain. She needed a minute to gather her thoughts.

"…the internet being the digital channel, digital arenas being intangible…," she continued. "And us having been converted to data from tangible, substantive life forms… in order for the media (that's us) to be compatible with the software (as it were), the intangible digital channel manifests around us in a way that is _understandable_ to us, the data. And more importantly…"

She opened her eyes to find the Doctor looking intently at her.

"…navigable to us," she finished.

"Yep," he agreed. "It's a place where there's a lot of information to be had, organised in broad-ish categories, also known as websites…"

"…right. We need to be able to move, and access the websites," she said. She took a deep breath and looked around. "So, the websites look like stores which we can enter, and our moving about is…"

"…good old-fashioned walking."

Martha held one foot out in front of her, and she looked at her foot. "Wow. To think this boot is carrying me from one store to the next, but it's all just… fake. It's like a fantasy."

"Not a fantasy. More like manifestation of our brains' combined conception of how information on the internet is organised," he corrected.

"And if each store is a website, does everything on the site occur as items for sale in the store?"

The Doctor squinted and looked at some of the available sites around him. "Good question. Well, look, there's a hair club website across the fountain. There are five doors in the back of the store, do you see?"

"My guess is, what you see is the homepage, and if you want to go other pages within the site, you go through the doors. What's on the walls and for sale is whatever is on the homepage."

She squinted as well, and smiled. "Yeah, I bet you're right. So… I thought were supposed to wind up on that movie website," she commented, looking about once more. "The one that exists digitally right beside the Audacious Attire site. We appear to have uploaded right to the middle of the mall."

"Yeah, you're right. I guess we misfired," he muttered. "Oh well. That's what this is for." He smiled widely and pointed at a big, wide desk to his right, Martha's left. The desk was white and circular, and a woman sat there in a business suit, smiling. There was a high canopy hung over the desk, a big, wide white wall along the back behind the woman, and on the front, in multi-coloured letters, figured the word _Google_.

Martha and the Doctor walked up to the desk. "Excuse me," said the Doctor. "Can you direct us to Audacious Attire?"

"Certainly," the woman said with a smile. She seemed to flip through a very thick Rolodex in front of her, and said, "Audacious Attire – 348 hits. Narrow it down?"

"Er, it's a retro clothing store in London."

"Oh, okay," she chirped. She pointed to her left. "Go that way six hundred and eighteen miles, and take a right when you reach the clothing department. After that, it should be about three and a half years to your destination."

"Thanks," he said. He took Martha's hand, and they went in the direction that the_ Google_ woman had indicated.

"So this is how it works!" Martha marvelled. "Hm, I guess when the software misfired us, it defaulted to Robert Oliver's homepage."

"I would presume so, yes," he agreed. "Google is most people's home page, so…"

"Wait. How are we supposed to walk six hundred miles, and then three and a half years?"

"There has to be another way to navigate this thing," he commented, not bothered just yet. "Data does not travel this slowly on the web, or no-one would be able to surf, ever. But at the moment, I don't know what that way is. We'll work it out. For now, we just walk."

"You seem awfully calm."

"Like I said, we'll work it out."

"But this means that Robert Oliver can't find us," she reminded him. "We are not where we said we'd be."

"Then we'd better work it out sooner than later."

Looking about at the various website/stores, Martha mused, "Well, it seems like we could almost create something…"

"…that's right, and this _shopping mall_ thing, as I said, is a manifestation of our combined conceptions of how data moves through the internet. Understandable to us. I gotta say, though, Martha, this is mostly you. I don't have a conception of this that could manifest, really, because…"

"…you understand too well how it actually works."

"Well, yeah. If we gave you a three-year pregnancy, you would too."

"Yeah, thanks for that. Are you sure I shouldn't be wearing a helmet, Doctor? People like me often run into things and have spontaneous bouts of self-flagellation with cricket bats."

"Sorry. The point is, I don't understand, now that we're in here, how data might jump from one place to another, quick-like. I mean, we could do keystrokes if we were on the outside, but…"

"…so if we're going to combine our conceptions of how data travels, how would we do it?" she asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine," he told her. Then he seemed to look beyond her, and groan. "Oh, God. Oh, don't look."

"Well, _that's_ no good," she told him comically. "That's guaranteed to make me look."

She turned her head toward whatever it was he had seen. The first few sites on their journey were covered, like store fronts, with heavy doors and black paint, and seemed to have bouncers out front. The one to which he was referring was covered only superficially – the windows were slightly fogged, but they could see inside, and they could see what the people were doing. Martha laughed.

"Doctor, it's just a bit of porn. What, you've never looked?"

His eyebrows rose. In a million years, he'd never have guessed he be asked this question by Martha Jones.

She laughed again.

"Well, all of a sudden you're all proper and prudish!" she exclaimed. "You know, I read a statistic that something like ninety per-cent of what's on the internet is… that. So, we'll probably see more of it."

The Doctor scrunched his nose in distaste. "I guess the least we can hope for is that most porn sites will have the courtesy to make it harder to view," he said, resignedly. "Like them." He gestured toward the first few sites with black paint and security.

"Hm," she said. "Who are the bouncers? Or _what_ are they?"

"They're the manifestation of that bit of code that either keeps a person out, or lets them in," he said.

"And those two in the window, doing their thing, they're the bit of code that contains…"

"Yeah, let's move on, shall we?"

They moved along, passing by a number of similarly explicit sites, in varying states of security. Some were locked down tight with bouncers that looked like the Incredible Hulk. Others had fogged windows, with skinny guards outside who couldn't stop a fly. Still others were not protected at all, and the "bits of code" could be seen, out in the open, no doors or windows, just doing what they were programmed to do. And in spite of Martha's amusement before, she found that she was, in fact, rather uncomfortable with some of what she saw.

Mercifully, eventually, they were past the area that seemed to be exclusively devoted to this material, and found that after that, the mall was dotted, with diverse degrees of frequency, with the pornographic sites, in between the rest of the fodder of the internet.

"Well, look at that," Martha said, pointing at one of the site stores. "Fancy meeting them here."

The Doctor chuckled. "Kirk and Spock," he said. "One hell of a sci-fi team, I must say."

They could see and hear the two characters interacting, in stilted, uncharacteristically banal language. They were moving about on what appeared to be a modified bridge from the original _Star Trek _series. Martha and the Doctor watched with distracted wonder, but before long, Captain Kirk seemed to be touching Mr. Spock somewhat intimately, and the Vulcan, in spite of his unemotional proclivities, seemed to be confessing some manner of long-repressed romantic interest in the Captain.

"Whoa! What is that? When did this happen?" asked the Doctor.

"It didn't," Martha answered. "It's fan fiction. Let's just move on before the Enterprise lands us back in Pornotown, yeah?"

It took them a few minutes to weed through all the scenarios associated with similar pop-culture phenomena, not all of them sexual – but many. For the most part, Martha found the whole thing rather funny, especially when she asked, "Who the hell writes fan fiction for _The Smurfs?_" But, she forced herself to look away from the _Harry Potter_ scenes – these were characters and events not to be messed with, in her mind.

"There seems to be a plethora of vampire crossovers," the Doctor commented.

"Yeah, it's a _thing_," Martha sighed. "Thank Anne Rice."

"Hello you two!" a voice said out of nowhere. A man approached them loudly, and began practically shouting in their faces as they tried to walk. "Did you know you could save up to three thousand pounds on a down-payment on a home? All you have to do is…"

"What?" Martha shouted. "Who are you?"

"He's a pop-up," the Doctor mused. "Just tell him to go away."

She gestured for the man to get lost, and he did, with no questions asked.

This incident seemed to snap Martha into action, and remind her of why they were there. "Doctor, we're getting distracted, and getting nowhere," she whined. "And nothing has changed. Tish still needs us."

"Don't you want to explore some more?" he joked. "I wouldn't mind seeing what the Amazon site looks like. Probably Grand Central Station, with books!"

"How do we jump to Audacious Attire?" she wanted to know. "Think!"

"How do people move about on the internet?" he asked her. "They surf!"

"You want us to surf?"

"No, no, that won't work," he said, almost murmuring to himself.

"Well, I didn't think so."

"In our world, it's a quirk of the English language, it's a metaphor. Used literally, even semi-conceptually, even here… it'll still take us forever, not to mention, we'd still need to learn how to surf. That takes years, doesn't it?"

"Yes, and I'm not allowed to surf or ski while pregnant," she reminded him. "Okay, so how do _you and I _travel from one place to another? We… teleport in a manner of speaking. Hm. Maybe we should go back to _Star Trek_ and see if Scotty can beam us over there."

He sniffed, chuckling a bit. "Interesting idea!"

"Would that work?"

"No," he answered. "Because Scotty doesn't know he's a fictional character. His paradigm of existence is his own world. Come to think of it, he's not meant to react with anyone except characters he's been _written_ to react with. I don't know if he'd even be able to hear us if we spoke to him."

"Okay, I get it," Martha nodded.

"And even if he could, he'd be able to beam us anywhere in the _Star Trek_ universe, but not anywhere on the internet."

"Got it, Doctor. So, like the internet itself, it has to be something more tangible and understandable to _us_. Like…"

"Like the TARDIS."

"You read my mind," she sighed.

"I don't know why I didn't think of it before," he said, scolding himself.

"I was just thinking that myself!"

"It would be incredibly easy to pare her down into data, since most of her inner workings are intangible anyway, and she would be able to interface with us. Damn it!"

"So we don't have the TARDIS, but… oh, Doctor, we're missing something crucial!"

"What?"

"Google, it provides information on how to find specific info, right? It gives URL's for whatever you want."

"Yes, so?"

"So, that's what she did, the lady at the Google desk. She told us _where_ it was that we wanted to go. But Google also provides links, so you don't have to type in the complex URL's, with all the crazy codes and back-slashes and whatnot."

"That's true," the Doctor conceded. "I guess if we'd been thinking, we'd have asked for a link, instead of directions."

"It would still have to manifest somehow, though."

"Yeah, but it would be a lot quicker than six hundred miles, followed by a three-year walk!"

"So let's go back."

They passed all of the previous sites in reverse order: _Harry Potter_ fan fiction, various artistically-modified, but recognisable, fixtures of culture, finishing up with _Star Trek_. Then there was the porn… lots and lots of it. At last, they were back at the Google kiosk, and the woman smiled at them.

"Hello again," the Doctor said.

"Hello. What can I do for you?"

"Audacious Attire, retro dress shop in London…"

"Oh, were you not able to find it?" she asked, seemingly concerned.

"Well, it's a bit far," he said. "Any way you could provide a link?"

"Certainly," she said. "Please step this way."

She moved to the side and gestured for the travellers to follow her back behind the wide white wall. There was a blue metal door that seemed to lead back into the wall, and to a strictly logical observer, might open on the other side, where the woman had been sitting.

She gestured to the door. "Here you go. Enjoy your experience."

"Thanks," the Doctor said. Then he too gestured to the door and said to Martha, "After you."

They stepped through into a black room, peppered with brightly-coloured retro clothes. Clearly, this was Audacious Attire's site.

And sure enough, along the back wall, there were several doors. They all had labels like "Bridal," "Formal," "Clearance," and "About us."

"Doctor, I don't see a door that might lead to the photos of the brides," Martha said, walking toward them. "That's where we'd find them, right?"

"Most likely," he said. "Remember, that part of the site was encrypted. Not even Fiona Hart knew it was there."

Suddenly he turned his back to the doors. He looked straight ahead, and seemed to be concentrating. He began slowly turning in place, to his right. Martha asked what he was doing, but he shushed her, and assured her it would become clear in a moment. When he had gone about two hundred degrees of the circle, he said, "There!" Though, he was still staring ahead, quite still. He'd never allowed his eyes to wander – always straight ahead.

"There, what?"

"There's the door! The encrypted link!"

"Where?" She was looking in the direction in which he was staring.

"No not that way. Come here."

She walked toward him, and he positioned her in front of him, facing the same way as he was.

"What am I looking at?" she wanted to know.

"Do you see, there on the left…"

She turned her head slightly to the left.

"No, don't turn your head," he told her, physically grabbing her head with both hands and moving it back into position. "And don't move your eyes. Stare straight ahead, and try to perceive the encrypted door on the left. It's just there, in the corner of your eye, just outside your line of vision."

Martha was silent for a few moments.

"Do you see?" he asked, after she hadn't said anything for a while.

"Yeah," she told him. "Perception filter."

"Exactly," he whispered, smirking. "Where did you learn that phrase?"

"I don't know," she whispered back. "It came to me one day at random. I assumed it was part of my Time Lord acquisition thing."

"It is," he agreed. "And I realised a while back while I was examining Fiona's CPU that the Phlotigo being had buried itself in her website under a digital perception filter. And we just found it."

"How do we get to it, if we can't look directly at it?"

"Concentrate on it," he said. "Do you see it there?"

"Yes, I said I did."

"Really see it. Know that it's real."

"Okay. Doctor, this is incredibly weird."

"Now very slowly, very, very slowly," he whispered, still facing ahead, not having moved. "Turn your eyes toward it."

She obeyed. She turned her eyes.

"And concentrate," he continued. "Concentrate on the door, Martha, and turn your head. Turn your head to that place in the corner of your eye."

She obeyed again. And there it was. A door that hadn't been there before.

"Blimey!" she said breathlessly, amazed.

"Don't take your eyes off it. Just walk toward it and go through."

She nodded, and once again, did as he told her. He followed her through the door.

In front of them was a cluster of at least fifteen women, all dressed in white.


	19. Chapter 19

JUST THEN

The women were sitting on the floor in a frightened cluster, clinging to one another, each wearing her wedding gown. White lace and taffeta hemorrhaged from the group, and fifteen sets of eyes went as wide as saucers when the Doctor and Martha entered the room.

"Oh my God! Tish!" Martha exclaimed, lurching forward instinctively to rescue her sister. All the girls looked back at her with terror in their eyes. Tish opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

"Martha, stop," the Doctor instructed firmly.

"Wise decision. We wouldn't want anyone's data dispersed, never to be reconstituted, now would we?" a voice said. It was a pleasant voice, spoken with a crisp, clean RP and an infuriating, condescending tone. All eyes were drawn to a space near the corner of the room where the apparition of a man stood. He seemed to be wearing a suit, the familiar kind, of the sort worn on Earth by men (much like the Doctor's suit). He was nice- though sinister-looking, of medium height, and had a pencil-thin mustache stretching over his perfect upper lip. He was standing near a black lacquer desk with a desktop computer on it.

"Indeed not," the Doctor responded coolly.

"Hello, Doctor," the apparition said. "I've been waiting a long time to meet you. Been watching, admiring your work. And Miss Jones, you too – nice to see you."

"Great, now that we have the niceties out of the way," the Doctor said. "Who the hell are you? Only fair, since you seem to know us."

"I'm Windselt. I'm from the planet Verrlakt in the… oh, come on, Doctor," said the man. "You know the rest."

"In the Phlotigo Galaxy," the Doctor finished.

"Of course," said Windselt.

The Doctor scratched his ear and looked about the room. "Well, nice joint you've got here – very posh for something that exists on an intangible plane."

"You think so? I find it rather dreary."

"What? Dreary? Brown is the new black, my friend," said the Doctor mockingly, referring to the colour of the walls. He then gestured grandly to his own trademark chocolate brown pin-striped garment. "Just check out the _ensemble_. You think I just took a dive in my wardrobe one Christmas morning and randomly chose this suit? Nah – takes work to look this good."

Windselt smirked. "Oh, I can see that much, Mr. GQ. But brown walls… very unbecoming."

The Doctor narrowed his eyes and paused. He decided to cut straight to the chase. "Windselt from Verrlakt, what are you doing here?"

"I was uploaded accidentally."

"I could have told you that much," the Doctor told him, shrugging, speaking very quickly, as though his adversary were being very, very tedious. "Martha and I identified the codes of origin from the residual energy at the abduction sites, and from the encrypted e-mails, long ago. And knowing what I know of Phlotigo beings and your wispy existence, of course I automatically went to _accidental transference into and of living data,_ because I'm not an imbecile. So, I suppose the better question is, now that you're here, why are you…"

"Kidnapping girls, instead of finding a way out, like any _rational_ sentient being?" Martha interjected.

The villain smiled silkily. "Oh, Miss Jones, it wouldn't be sporting to tell you that. I know you've travelled for most of this past year with the Doctor - well, travelled, and done other things – and you've seen a lot of hair-brained schemes from all corners of the universe. But do I look like your average blundering alien who just spills all of his plans?"

"Clearly not," she responded sarcastically. "In fact, you don't look _average_ in any way. You just look like an impotent, loose ball of subatomic particles who has little or no influence on the material world, and who stumbled ass-backwards onto a way to gain some power. So, I apologise for thinking you had anything clever up your sleeve."

Windselt stared at her, biting his upper lip. For an intangible being, Martha thought, his display of anger surely was palpable.

The Doctor looked at his trusted companion and smirked. They both knew they'd hit a nerve.

"Careful Miss Jones," he said. "You're out of your element here. Even you and your dashing friend are not privy to the rules of my world. Don't make me give you a virus. What could either of you do about it, as things stand now?"

Martha didn't show any concern on her face, but internally, she realised the slimy phantom was right. She and the Doctor were learning about this world as they went. Even with their advanced Time Lord perception, they didn't really understand the physics of the internet, once they were inside. They absolutely did not need him putting up his defences now, and shouldn't risk putting him on the offensive.

The Doctor wandered about the room innocuously, riding the uncomfortable silence. At last he spoke. "Okay, so why _are_ the walls brown, if you can't bear brown?"

The apparition sighed. "Well, I didn't design the website, did I? That Frumpette of a dress shop owner designed it, and the colour scheme on the entire site is set to a default template. Hence – brown."

"Ah, I see," said the Doctor, pretending to commiserate. "And, well, you're just too… Martha, what was the word you used? Impotent? Too impotent to build your own website, then. Well, that must be no fun at all."

Windselt stared at the Doctor, face tight, blinking. "For your information, Doctor, I don't have the autonomy for that. That's not how it works."

"Oh, _autonomy_. I might have known it would come down to that."

"Yes, well," said Windselt, clasping his hands in front of him, dialling his voice down to almost a whisper. "Most things do."

From his tone, both Martha and the Doctor could hear that he was not exactly satisfied with the level of _autonomy_ that he did have. After all, autonomy was just a synonym for _power_.

And in spite of Windselt's mostly cool demeanour and claims not to be the type of villain who talks too much, they knew they could exploit his considerable insecurity.

"Oh yes," the Doctor agreed, exaggeratedly. "And I could see why you'd have to kidnap people, just because you _can._ I could see why you'd feel the need to do something so sloppily as to attract attention and have someone like me come after you, since, well, I'm sort of a legend, if I do say so myself… and you're… well…"

"Why are you trying my patience, Doctor?" asked Windselt. "Do I need to mention the word _virus_ again? Data dispersal? Deletion? One cannot create nor destroy matter, but you are not matter, so I can do as I please with you."

"You can't delete me!" the Doctor insisted. "You're just a piece of data yourself. Do the words _lateral force_ mean anything to you?"

"I can override and replace you," said Windselt.

"Please," the Doctor said dismissively. "Martha, untie your sister and the others, and let's get out of here."

Martha, once again, made to move forward, acting instinctively on the Doctor's instruction. This time, the voice stopping her was that of Windselt. He shouted the word so that it cut through the air, and her head, like a sword through butter. She froze in her tracks, only to hear a blood-curdling scream.

On the right, one of the wedding-dress clad women was blinking. Her entire body was flashing in and out of existence like a cursor.

"Amanda!" screamed one of the other women. Absently, Martha realised that Amanda Fineran, the first girl whose disappearance had attracted her and the Doctor's attention, and led them into this fray, was there and had screamed.

The other girls all clung to each other and murmured. Tish called out, "Martha, what did he do?" as Amanda cried and asked desperately what was happening, begging Martha and the Doctor, and anyone who would listen, to make it stop.

She looked to the corner at Windselt, and he was now standing behind the computer, with his hand poised to hit a key.

"He's trying to replace her. She is suspended data," Martha answered, once again, pulling knowledge from seemingly nowhere.

"Stop him! Doctor!" Tish demanded. Though it came out sounding more like a plea.

"No, no, no, no," one of the other girls said, through a sheet of tears covering her face. "He's bluffing. He's bluffing, isn't he?"

"Shut up," Martha muttered to her.

"Hmm, are you sure you'd like to replace the existing file?" asked Windselt, staring at the screen. "Yes, no, or cancel. I say… yes!"

With that, his hand came down upon the keyboard.

The Doctor screamed out a protest, and a couple of the girls reached out in a vain attempt to try and save her, but with that one keystroke, Amanda Fineran was gone. She had been overridden by Windselt's data, and replaced.

"What did you do that for?" the Doctor screamed.

Windselt smiled. "I think you said it best, just a few moments ago, sir. _Because I can._"

"Well, then," the Doctor growled. "If data can override and replace other data, then I can replace you. And so can Martha. Or Tish. Or Linnea, or Anne-Marie, or anyone else."

Maintaining his smile, Windselt replied, "No, you can't. Not without one of these." He gestured to his computer. "So do your worst, Doctor. I'm never going to give you access."

"That sounds like a challenge," Martha commented, crossing her arms over her chest.

"And a pretty empty one at that," the Doctor said to her. "That computer does not give him power. And if it does, and he has to grandstand like that, then, well…"

"Yeah, you're right," Martha riffed. "He must not have much."

"Did you not see what it can do?" Windselt asked, betraying frustration that his foes were not properly appreciating his awesome talent.

"That machine did not override the data," the Doctor challenged, though he felt sure that the machine _had_ overridden the data. "You are navigating this world some other way. This is the internet – why would you have a computer on the inside?"

Windselt smiled even bigger. "Clever, eh?"

"What is?"

"My computer! Well, not _my _computer, exactly – I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't." He was excited now, truly wrapped up in the fun, like a child.

"Take credit for what?"

"It was created before my time, back when the internet first went mainstream."

Martha's brain caught up at that point. She pointed at the computer. "You mean – that?"

"Yep. So many figures exist on the internet, characters, personalities, entities, et cetera. The _autonomous_ ones wanted a way to see the outside world. And since this world is intangible and we can manifest in almost any way, and almost anything… _voilà_."

"So what, you just said _abracadabra_ and you had what looked like desktop computers that let you… _browse the real world?_"

"Well, I didn't," Windselt said, haughtily. "My forebears did. And not everyone here has one – only certain entities that exist here in cyber form."

"Like who?" asked the Doctor.

"Like, say, Jeeves from the _Ask Jeeves_ website, and that annoying grammar-correcting paperclip that Microsoft inflicted upon the world."

"What about all those people and things we saw coming in?" asked Martha. "The _Star Trek_ characters and the porn stars?"

"The characters don't know they are characters, and do not know they are on the internet," said Winselt. "Same goes for photos of celebrities and the like. So… I guess if the porno scenario includes actual characters and plot, such as it is, then… the characters there don't know either."

"You reckon they just think they're very, very lucky?" asked the Doctor.

"Exactly. But for my part, I'm not a character. I'm raw data, uploaded and converted from a sentient being. I exist only here, I was not put online for any _purpose _per se. Jeeves, he only exists on the internet, nowhere else, not in a book or on TV – he's not a character, he's utilitarian. He knows who and what he is, and _where _he is."

"So that's why you and he have autonomy," Martha confirmed.

"Yes."

"But wait," said the Doctor. "You said you _didn't_ have autonomy a little while ago."

"There are…" Windselt began, before stopping himself.

"I knew it!" the Doctor shouted, as his adversary clipped his lips together once again, looking disgusted with himself. He knew he'd given something away.

"You know nothing!" Windselt spat.

"Oh-ho! I do so! Martha, did you hear what he was about to say?"

"There are _levels_ of autonomy? Yes, I caught it," she answered, nodding rather smugly.

"Bloody brilliant!" cried the Doctor.

"I wasn't going to say that!" Windselt protested.

"Then what were you going to say?" asked the Doctor. "I asked how you could have autonomy enough for a computer when you'd said a few minutes ago that you didn't have autonomy enough to change the colour scheme on the website, and you said _there are…_"

"I wasn't going to say that," Windselt repeated, this time murmuring.

"What else could it be? _There are_ what? Elves that change default settings on home-grown websites?"

"No."

"So it must be levels of autonomy," the Doctor concluded loudly. "You were accidentally uploaded by Fiona Hart because she unwittingly used an acquisition code that matched your energy signature, and it was easy because you're intangible anyway. But her upload was site-specific – you are a piece of data that is a _part_ of this website, not a part of the creation of it, so you can't control the surrounding itself. You can somewhat control the pieces of it because you have _a certain level _of autonomy, with your fancy computer and all, but… oh, I think I've got your number now, Mr. Windselt. Or rather, I've got your code!"

"Which means…" Martha said excitedly.

"That's right!" he replied, just as excitedly.

"We were uploaded as _general_ data onto the greater plane of the internet itself, and we have free-roaming data navigation properties… and you don't! Which means, we have more _autonomy_ than you!" she continued. "Oh, fantastic. Now, how to exploit this…"

"Oh, Martha, Martha," the Doctor mused, amusedly. "Indeed, how?"

Windselt looked back and forth between them, as though he were watching a tennis match in a panic. Apparently, Martha and the Doctor were communicating somehow, and had the same idea. How _would_ they exploit their power? Windselt was mightily pissed off that these two interlopers had been here on this plane of existence for all of ten minutes, and already they seemed to have the better of him. He had been watching them, via his special computer surveillance system from within the internet, for months. How could _they_ trump _him_ already? Was it because they were… no, that couldn't be. They couldn't be _that _clever, could they?

But before he could come to a proper answer, Martha Jones was dashing, as best she could in her condition, for a door at the back of the room.

"Stop! I demand that you stop!" he cried out to her.

"Oh yeah, that'll do it," the Doctor sighed.

Before the Phlotigo being could get to her, she was through the door.

"Stop it!" he was still shouting. "How did you even know that door was there? No-one is supposed to be able to see it!"

And without the Doctor to protest, Windselt disappeared through the door after Martha. After a few seconds, the Doctor poked his head inside and saw, just inside the doorway, the surveillance computer for the encrypted e-mail origin centre, into which they had disappeared. He rendered it useless with his own Sonic Screwdriver, thus ensuring that the fiend would not be able to replace Martha as another form of data. He calmly shut the door and returned to the brown-panelled room with Tish and the other brides, minus Amanda Fineran.

"Aren't you going to go after them?" Tish asked, extracting herself from the bridal cluster and approaching the Doctor.

He installed himself behind the computer, and answered, "She ran off to distract him, so I could do this."

He clicked on the hard-drive and immediately found an application that allowed him to "browse" the real world, as Martha had put it. He could see who was looking at the website. He clicked on an icon for London, and followed a directory until it pulled up what seemed like a live video feed of Robert Oliver, looking bored.

* * *

><p>Almost a half hour had passed since Martha and the Doctor had vanished, and he had seen nothing change upon the website where Tish's photo appeared, looking radiant in her wedding gown. After twenty minutes, he had gone to the kitchen for a beer, stood and read a letter from his alma mater's alumni association, grabbed a handful of peanuts, and then returned to the computer. Still no change, but then again, he hadn't refreshed in a while.<p>

So, he clicked on the button at the top of the page that looked like a round arrow.

He gasped.

"Bloody hell, Doctor," he said out loud. "How in God's name did you do that?"

At the top of the screen, there appeared a picture of the man whom, until tonight, he believed simply to be Martha Jones' very unusual boyfriend. Now, it was clear that he was so much more. He had achieved a phenomenon that was so far on the outskirts of current human knowledge of physics, people in-the-know with computers, like Robert Oliver, believed that it wouldn't be possible for another several thousand years, if at all. If he didn't know better, he'd swear that this _Doctor_ was from the future.

In the photo, the Doctor appeared very serious, and seemed to be staring back at the viewer from inside the website. Robert Oliver refreshed again, just to see what would happen.

In the picture, Tish appeared, and she was leaning across the Doctor, shouting at the viewer.

He laughed out loud. "Hi, Tish," he said with a giggle.

He refreshed again.

This time the picture was of Tish looking excitedly at the Doctor, the Doctor looking annoyed.

Again, Robert Oliver laughed out loud, and refreshed the page.

This time, Tish was gone from the frame, and the Doctor was looking earnest once more. He was pointing at the bottom of the image. There was a caption that read, "I'm going to need access to your hard drive."

"What?" Robert Oliver said to the screen. "Are you kidding me? Blimey, how do I even answer you?"

Refresh.

The caption said, "Just speak. I can both see and hear you."

"Well, that's creepy. And why do you need access to my hard drive?"

Refresh.

"No time to explain – the bad guy has Martha on the run. Do you want to save Tish or not?"

The photo of the Doctor was scowling.

Robert Oliver sighed. "Fine. What do I do?"

He refreshed several times over the next few minutes before there was a reply. Finally, the caption said, "I just created a simple text field at the top of the page – do you see it?"

"I do now."

"Start by typing in the directory link to your anti-virus software."

"You're going to disable it, aren't you?"

"No, I'm going to teach it to fish."


	20. Chapter 20

MINUTES LATER

The girls in their wedding gowns had gathered round the computer station, fearfully waiting for something to happen. Tish stood by and watched the Doctor's fingers fly over the keyboard. He was frowning at it, occasionally talking to it, sometimes not so nicely. She didn't really understand computers, apart from point-and-click, plugging in a flash drive, using the internet, et cetera. None of what was happening on the screen made any sense to her, so she asked, "What are you doing?"

"You saw what I said," he muttered at her. "Teaching your fiancé's anti-virus software to fish. Well, not really. It already knows how to fish. I'm teaching it to fish for something new. Salmon instead of Walleye."

"Okay, Martha's the one with the heightened super-smart mummy powers, remember? Not me. Talk to me like I'm human."

He stopped and looked around at all the women, who were all staring intently at him. They were all befuddled almost beyond repair. They had no way of wrapping their minds around what had happened to them, where they were, and had no idea who the Doctor was, nor how to deal with what they had seen and heard him do. All of this occurred to him in a split second as he read fear in thirteen pairs of eyes, having really looked at them for the first time.

He reckoned there was no time to start from the beginning and _really _explain to them what was going on, so he began with where they had left off: here and now. He took a deep breath and explained, "Anti-virus software, its purpose is to fish for a certain type of data, right? Corrupting data, the kind that erases files, crashes computers and the like."

"Right," Tish said, nodding.

"I'm programming Robert Oliver's software to fish for me."

"For you?"

"Yes. Well, not just me. Us. I am now data – as are you, and Martha, all of us – even that cooky Windselt bloke. We're here on the internet, we've been converted from sentient life, and we're all just data. And every unique piece of data is just a bunch of lines of unique code, which, in the real world, would be called an energy signature. It's how this whole thing works, it's what makes this possible – your energy signature got broken down into code and uploaded to the internet."

"Oh, I see. So you're programming the software to zero in on _your_ unique code lines."

"_Exactamundo," _he said to her, then set to work again with the tip of his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth. "When I'm done with this thing, it should be able to find us wherever we are on the internet, and with a little finesse…"

With that, he took the Sonic and aimed it at the CPU.

"…we can muddle the definition of _code_ and _energy signature_, so that…"

And with that, he seemed to fall out of his chair and go to his knees, searching through a cabinet below the computer. He came back up two seconds later with a microphone, which he plugged into the CPU. Then he shaped his lips as if to say, "oh," and breathed into the receiver.

"…we can use energy to lead the software to data. Innit brilliant?"

"I guess," Tish said, as the Doctor's fingers flew over the keys again. "But wouldn't it delete us as soon as it found us? Isn't that anti-virus' job?"

"Yeah, already thought of that. It won't delete us. 'Course, we'll have to be careful 'cause that means it won't delete any of the malevolent data either, and if Windselt gets wind of what we're doing, he could crash Robert Oliver's whole system and we'd be stuck, because we don't have another terminal… unless your betrothed is a hell of a lot smarter than he seems."

"Oi!"

"No, I mean… he'd have to be clever like…"

"Like you?"

"Well, yeah."

"How do you know he's not?" Tish asked defensively, her arms folded across her lace-clad chest.

"Pff. Tish, really. Why don't we just stick with not letting a virus crash his computer, yeah?"

She clicked her tongue and sighed in annoyance.

"_Voilà!_" he cried out. "_Molto bene!_ Oh, I am so good! Robert Oliver's software has taken my energy signature from my breath and converted it to data, and now it can fish for me!"

"Wow," Tish commented. "That's pretty cool."

He clicked a few more keys, then held out the mic to Tish. "Now you."

"Me? I breathe on it?"

"Yep."

She did as asked, and the Doctor's fingers danced again, and he announced, "Now it can fish for you!" He turned to a plump black-haired girl on his left. "What's your name, love?"

"Emma Sweetin," she answered shyly.

He put in that information, then asked her to breathe on the mic. She did. He repeated the process for every girl in the room, and then created a file for Martha. He used some residual energy of Martha's contained in the Sonic to feed the computer her signature, and then the task was complete.

"Now," he said, clapping, then rubbing his hands together. He started typing again. "Let's get the hell out of… whoa."

"What, whoa?" asked Tish.

"Whoa, I see how he did it," the Doctor said. "I see how he kidnapped you lot. Oh, this is very, very clever. Well, really it's awful. But also very, very clever."

"Well thanks," Tish said, looking at the other girls for commiseration. "It's great to know that weren't abducted and held hostage by a moron. 'Cause _that_ would be embarrassing."

"It's a reverse form of the same kind of thing, same principle," he told her, ignoring her irritation. He stopped, took his hands away from the keyboard, and seemed to think it through. He spoke to Tish, but Tish got the feeling that he was talking more for his own benefit than for hers. "He had your names and rough locales because he's part of this website – Fiona Hart would have input your data, your dresses, your e-mail, all of that, when you made the purchase. So he built that room over there, protected by a digital perception filter – an encryption – and made it into a second e-mail origin centre. From there, he sent you all sorts of info, hundreds of e-mails per day about bridal conventions, florists, cakes, shoes, hair design, all of that, to get you more excited."

"Oh!" Tish said, her eyebrows going up. She made an expression of distaste. "This actually makes sense to me – how scary is that?"

He pointed at the screen. "See, what I'm looking at is a programming code that does essentially what I just did with the anti-virus software – it fishes for certain data, but in the real world, so… it's fishing for energy signatures. _Blimey_ that's brilliant. Only, in the real world it's harder to do because the atmosphere is made of air and not ones and zeroes, so the paths are more esoteric and much tougher to pin down."

"Ah. Okay, keep talking."

"But! If you heighten energy, say, feed excitement with regular e-mails and _constant_ thoughts of the wedding day…"

"Then the energy signature gets stronger, and the software can find you more easily, thus breaking your energy down into code, uploading you, et cetera, et cetera."

"Very good, Tish," he said, smiling. "We'll make a nerd out of you yet."

She sighed. "Wonderful."

The Doctor stared at the screen and sighed. "This is how Windselt gets his real autonomy. Forget all that stuff about being aware of onself as an internet entity and having intrinsic privileges or whatever – _this_ is the real power, here. It's like Martha said, he's never had much influence on the real world since he's more ectoplasm than matter, but here, he's found a way to have a measure of power in the world, and it… well, it may have driven him mad. Or he might have been mad before – I guess we'll never know."

The room was silent for a few seconds, and then he seemed to realise something. "I wonder…" he whispered, before going to work typing again. This time, Tish could see that he was searching for something, not programming anything.

"What are you looking for?"

"I'm looking for other codes that might indicate who he was planning on abducting next, if anyone."

"Oh, so you could identify the person and warn her?"

"Well, no," he said, still clicking about. "It would just be a bunch of code, so I wouldn't really be able to get a name, but… well… you're right, this is kind of an empty exercise. Although, I suppose I could interpret code to energy using the Sonic, and then see if the TARDIS can reconcile the signatures with known living entities in the area, in this time period… whoa."

"What, whoa, again?"

"Yeah. Big whoa. The biggest." His eyes were gigantic pools of brown, and his mouth hung open as he gaped at the screen.

"What?"

"This can't be." He aimed the Sonic at the screen again, and lots of scary flashes blipped by.

"What can't be?"

"It's Martha," he said, tossing the Sonic aside for a moment, and pulling his hand down over his face in distress.

"Martha? _Our_ Martha? He was going to kidnap her?"

"Yeah," the Doctor answered absently, before checking his work one more time with the Sonic.

"What does he want with her?"

The Doctor looked at Tish with a bit of disbelief. "What kind of question is that? What does he want with _any_ of you? Why the hell's he doing any of this? What would an ectoplasmic being from the Phlotigo galaxy want with a human girl collection? That's the big question, which we haven't answered yet."

"Gee, sorry."

"Except… this signature of Martha's… something's not right."

"Well, that goes without saying. I'd be more concerned if you said something _is _right!"

"No, I mean… it's definitely Martha's code, or at least it's very, very close. Very, _very_ close – but a bit off somehow. The Sonic recognises it as Martha's signature, but… it's off."

"Off."

"Just slightly off."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know. It's like he was working on finding the right code, and we caught him before he got there… but no, that doesn't make sense. He doesn't just _write_ code, using trial and error, he starts with known codes and then manipulates them. No, this is different, something is up. This isn't right."

"Would he be able to get at her with it?"

"Well, I disabled the computer in that e-mail origin room anyway, so she's presumably safe for now, but… no, this wouldn't really work. If he wanted to steal her intact, he'd have to get closer. If he used _this_ to try and get at her, he'd only get, I don't know, part of her? Or maybe it would hurt her somehow – split her in two. I just don't know what this would do to her, but it doesn't seem like this code is precise enough to get her here the way he got you here."

"Hunh," Tish said. She frowned. "So it's Martha, but it's not Martha."

"Sort of."

A long silence hung in the air, just before Martha Jones came briskly out of the door through which she had gone, in order to stall Windselt.

"Doctor, please tell me you found away to magnetise data, or something?" she said, panting. "We've got to work fast – I can't run about anymore, not in this condition! My pelvis is going to break in half any second!"

She allowed herself to fall against him, and he hugged her, kissed the top of her head and said, "Oh yes! Uncle Robbo's anti-virus software is going fishing! Fishing for brides and Time Lords!"

"Uncle who?" asked Tish.

"Oh, I see what you did," Martha said, leaning forward on the desk and fingering the microphone. "So disable the webcam already and let's get out of here."

"How do we do that?" Tish asked.

"First, we leave this room," Martha said. "Am I right, Doctor?"

"Yep. He was uploaded to this specific site, so he can't leave. Once we get back into the common shopping mall area, he can't follow us. Although, we can't dawdle, because if he's figured out how to manipulate the real world, he'll have figured out how to do some not-nice things outside of this website, on the internet as well, so we have to hurry. Let's pray Robert Oliver hasn't fallen asleep at the wheel, and that his computer has a fast connection!"

"So what are we waiting for?" Tish shouted. She grabbed two of the other brides by the hands and cried out, "Now, now, girls!"

Fourteen brides, a pregnant medical student and a Time Lord dashed for the door leading out of the site. But just as it had before, when Martha had moved to untie the brides, a voice stopped them.

"I wouldn't if I were you, girls," the slimy apparition sang. "Remember – I can override data. Someone else could go the way of poor Amanda."

All sixteen of them halted in their tracks, unwilling to let anyone else be essentially killed. A few of the girls were whimpering, a few of them just expressed unadulterated anger all over their faces, and a few were simply holding onto each other like before, looking terrified.

Another long silence hung in the air, when finally, one of the brides, whom the Doctor and Martha recognised as Linnea Mays, said, "Girls, we are unified. We've lost Amanda, yes, and that's horrible, but if we stop now, we'll always be prisoners. If we stay here, we're lost forever. If we wait for another opportunity, and continue to try and escape, he'll just pick us off one by one until all of us are dead – or whatever. I say, don't let Amanda die in vain. I say, if another one of us is lost along with her, then two will have died to save thirteen – I like that balance better than the alternative. Yeah?"

The brides all tittered with nervous energy, and quite a few expressed agreement.

"So let's make a dash for it," Linnea whispered to her group.

"Doctor," Windselt hissed. "Get a hold on your women. Trust me, you don't want to let them do this." He sauntered back over to the computer where the Doctor had so recently worked his technological magic against him.

"Yeah, that'll be the day," said the Doctor, rolling his eyes. He looked at the girls squarely and whispered to them. "Ladies, in spite of myself I'm inclined to agree with Linnea. But I want you to understand – nothing is guaranteed. It might be one of you that he kills, it might be none of you. It might be all of you – we just don't know."

"That's right," Windselt mocked. "You don't know. None of you knows anything."

"Anything is better than captivity, Doctor," Tish told him.

"All right then," the Doctor said gravely. "Ladies, do what you…"

"Doctor, stop!" Martha spat. There was an urgency in her voice that he had never heard before. She had reached out in desperation and grabbed his forearm hard enough to bruise. The outburst caused all eyes to snap toward her, and for a moment, all thought of escape was forgotten.

"What?" he asked, turning toward her, taking her shoulder in both hands. "What's wrong? Martha, talk! Tell me!"

She had both hands on her swollen belly, and a look of utter horror on her face. "Something is tingling."

"What do you mean _something_?"

"Something inside," she shouted impatiently. "Humming, churning, whatever!"

The Doctor's jaw fell open and he and Martha caught each others' panicked eyes.

"No!" the Doctor growled, turning to face Windselt. "You did not."

"I did," said the apparition, pleased with himself. "I told you not to let them go just now."

"You unimaginable bastard," the Doctor said with gritted teeth. He stood with his legs apart and crossed his arms over his chest. He did not speak loudly, only emphatically. "Let this go, or _I will end you_. Don't think I won't."

Windselt laughed. "What is that worth, the threat of a Time Lord?"

"A hell of a lot, when you come at me through people I love," he snarled. He brandished the Sonic Screwdriver. "And when you're made of data."

"Doctor!" Martha pleaded, now fully in tears. Tish leaned forward and put her arms around Martha's shoulders. "Just…"

"Ah, but you're forgetting, Doctor," Windselt said, standing poised with his fingers over the computer. "I can make similar threats. I already have, as you can see. And if you and your girlfriend are lost, I can't be stopped."

"Just find out what he wants, and give it to him, Doctor," Tish commanded. "Look at her!"

The Doctor just stared at the smirking villain, with fire in his eyes. It was a standoff now – data manipulator versus data manipulator. The question was: who would strike first, if ever? Clearly Windselt had already struck, but how far would he go?

"What's going on?" Linnea asked, stepping forward to help comfort Martha.

"He's suspended the baby's data," Tish told her. "If we all don't cooperate, he's going to… _replace it_!"


	21. Chapter 21

**This chapter is quite short, but I felt that to launch into the next phase would make it prohibitively long... so you get a tight, sweet, hopefully slightly painful next installment of our saga! Hope you like.**

* * *

><p><span>IN NO TIME<span>

"Fine," said the Doctor, in response to Tish's plea that he just give Windselt whatever he wants. "What is it you're after?" His eyes were set like steel and his body eerily still.

"Oh! So we're willing to play the game, now that someone the Doctor cares about is in danger? What happened to collateral damage? What happened to _only two die to save thirteen?_ Ladies, have we changed our minds?" asked Windselt, feigning sympathy.

"Please!" spat Linnea Mays, rather out-of-turn. "Surely even you can see that you've crossed over the boundaries of honour and fair play."

"Linnea, let me handle this," the Doctor said to her, voice low, teeth clenched.

"I can see that I have," sighed Windselt, sounding rather bored. "I don't care, but yes, I can see."

"Well, the equation stands," she spat back at him.

"Linnea, let me handle this!" the Doctor repeated, a little harder, a little more clenched.

Linnea ignored him. "Nothing's changed," she said recklessly. She turned and faced Martha, and gestured at the bump at her middle. "If two have to die, even if it's…"

"_Do not_ finish that sentence, sweetheart," Tish warned. "We will not have any more discussion of collateral damage, or so help me, we will leave you here with the Phantom of the Internet, and will have no qualms about forgetting you ever existed. Do you get me?"

Linnea's eyes shot wide open and her jaw dropped. She'd fancied herself the leader of this gang of girls, and was genuinely shocked to be challenged.

The Doctor cleared his throat. He would thank Tish later. He felt sure, without a doubt, that he and Martha had chosen the right person to care for their son. "So, as I was saying, my wispy friend: what is it you want?"

Windselt grinned. "I've already got it. Well, almost."

The Doctor scowled. "I beg your pardon?"

"Let me ask you something, Miss Jones," Windselt said. "Martha, that is."

"Leave her alone, Windselt," said the Doctor, still scowling holes through the ectoplasm.

"Where were you born?" he asked her.

"What?" Martha asked, still doubled over, distracted, trying in vain to protect the baby.

"Where were you born?" he repeated. "Gallifrey, was it?"

"No, of course not," she spat.

"Oh, then it must have been Sorofrann," he reasoned. "And you must have been one of the lucky few to have won a scholarship to be schooled with the Time Lords."

"What are you talking about?" Martha asked. She remembered meeting the Doctor's friend Lincomb, who had been born on Sorofrann, and who had done exactly what Windselt was describing.

But slowly it dawned on her what he was getting at. He didn't really think she was from Gallifrey or Sorofrann at all. In spite of his smug inquiries, he knew very well that Martha Jones had been born on Earth, into a normal, human family.

"So how is it, Miss Jones, that you are so gifted in technology?" he asked her. "I've been watching you, and you have been keeping up with your pin-stripe-clad friend here, hardly missing a step as he machine guns his lofty theories and Gallifreyan gibberish at you. It seems also that you keep a similar perspective over time and space, more and more as the months have progressed, over the past, say, half a year?"

"I see," she said, standing up straight. "You really are an unimaginable bastard." She was echoing the Doctor's words from a few moments before.

"Almost as if an alien presence has taken up residence in your body, if only temporarily, and given you _the sight_," he said, mockingly.

"So… what? We're at an impasse?" asked Tish, utterly appalled that the villain was not playing fair. "You're holding the baby hostage for… itself? How is that even…?"

"This has been your goal all along?" the Doctor shouted. "To steal a Time Lord baby?"

"No, no, of course not," Windselt said, dismissively. "At first it was to gain energy, work out how to assimilate human energy signatures with my being so that I could become corporeal again, and then once I got myself out of this little hell I've been thrown into, I could… you know… wreak _proper_ havoc."

"Of course," the Doctor said shrugging. "If you're going to rain down destruction upon humanity, you don't want to cut corners."

"But the more I learned of you and Miss Jones and your offspring, the more I realised… mere human energy is not enough. Humans are rooted in the physical – they eat, they sleep, they copulate, they consume mass quantities of fermented barley – slaves to their ids, if you will. And that all sounds like great fun, don't get me wrong. But a Time Lord, Doctor… a bird's-eye view of all of time and space, what is, what was, what will be and what must not. And not just view it, but wield it. Travel, manipulate, pervade it, and feel it flowing through every fibre of your being. It's what a Time Lord consciousness does."

"Oh, bollocks," the Doctor sighed, pulling one hand down over his face.

"What is he talking about?" Tish wanted to know.

"From here, he can wield information, and he's been using it as a weapon," the Doctor explained. "He's been using his unique situation to manipulate you girls."

Martha chimed in, voice cracking under the strain of emotion and uncertainty. "Think of what he could do, wielding information throughout all of history, throughout the entire universe, with just the click of a mouse."

"Oh, God," Tish whispered.

"Yep. Exactly," the Doctor agreed. "Just like God."

Windselt laughed. "So much better than being merely _corporeal_," he boasted. "I was a fool not to realise the potential of my dilemma from the start. All of the internet and all of the tangible universe melded together as one, and with _me_ as the only being anywhere who can move freely, metaphorically of course, and leave my stamp on both. Right here, from this little computer. Isn't it fabulous?"

"Oh yeah, I'm just chomping at the bit for that to happen," the Doctor muttered sarcastically.

There was an uncomfortable silence, and finally Martha said, "Take me, then."

"Oh, Miss Jones," Windselt whined, as though he were so disappointed in her. "You're clever clever clever, but in your motherly haste, you haven't thought this through."

"Take me instead," Martha said. "Let the Doctor have the baby's data, and you can have me. Just… leave our son out of it."

"Martha…" the Doctor muttered, realising, as Windselt had, that she had not thought it through.

"Oh, you know as well as I do that you're pretty well useless without that child of yours," Windselt pointed out. "Once I separate you from him, well… it's him I'll want. So, sorry mummy, you can't save the day for the little tyke this time."

One more awkward silence fell over the group, and the Doctor said, "Let's just go."

"What?" asked Tish. "You can't be serious."

"I am absolutely serious," he argued. "Come on, ladies, turn around, and let's leave. Come on now, _avanti, allons-y _and the like." He was trying to push them through the door back into the mall area, where Windselt could not follow.

Martha was looking at him suspiciously, but only because she wasn't sure what he had up his sleeve, only that he had _something_.

"No, Doctor!" Tish protested. "This is madness! Girls, stay put!"

"Look, if we give him what he wants, he takes the baby. If we leave, he takes the baby. Either way, we're screwed. And if it's a question of data replacement or assimilation of the baby's Time Lord consciousness into Windselt's to make a bigger, badder, God-like Windselt, I'd rather just have it effectively deleted, thank you very much. So, let's go."

The girls turned to go, most of them confused, and just happy to have a direction.

"Doctor, that's a very bad idea," Windselt said.

"Well, clearly," agreed the Doctor. "But you haven't given us any fair options. So we're choosing the one that means we don't have to stand here and look at your pleasing, yet oddly disturbing, face anymore. So… bye."

"Doctor…" Martha began.

"Look, love," he said to her, taking her by the shoulders. "This whole situation is one big farce. Trust me, you can leave, and your conscience is clear. _Trust me._"

"Are you kidding?" she shouted.

"No. Because I think this big blowhard is bluffing."

"What did you just say, Doctor?" asked Windselt. "Dost mine ears deceive me? Did you just accuse me of _bluffing?_"

"That's right! Bluffing! I don't think you have the finesse to isolate the baby from Martha, and you don't have the power necessary to assimilate its consciousness with your own. And I know for _certain_ that it's impossible to do those things together, so… do your worst. We're leaving."

"One last warning Doctor!" Windselt shouted.

The Doctor ignored him, and led the women to the door.

And in one great, blood-curdling moment, Martha Jones screamed. When the Doctor turned to look, she was standing with her arms stretched out to the sides, and she was looking down at her body in astonishment. She was as thin as a rail – her bump was gone.

She began to hyperventilate, and Tish helped her get to her knees.

"Now you leave me no choice, Doctor," Windselt said, shaking his head. "You forced me to _replace_ the data of your child, so I'll just have to take _you_ instead."


	22. Chapter 22

AFTER TIME STOPPED

Martha was nearly on the floor, and couldn't decide between sobbing and hyperventilating. The Doctor fell to his knees in front of her as Tish gritted her teeth and looked at the Doctor with venom in her eyes.

"What the hell did you do?" Tish hissed at him.

He ignored her, and took Martha's cheeks gently in his hands. "Martha, Martha listen, it's okay." She fell forward and buried her face in his neck. He put his arms around her as she twitched with grief.

"How is it okay?" Tish shrieked.

"Doctor…" Martha wept.

"Martha."

"You…" she felt choked off by sadness. "You went too far this time." There were a billion other phrases, much more vulgar and appropriate to the situation, that she would have liked to hurl at him, but she didn't have the energy, nor the coherence to find the words.

"I know, I know," he said. "It's going to be okay."

"No, it's not! Think of what we've lost," she moaned, trying to catch her breath. She pulled back from him and looked at him as squarely as she could. "Think of what the universe has lost."

"Martha, listen," he said, boosting her chin with two of his fingers. "Can you still see?"

"See what?" she sniffled.

"_See_, Martha. Can you still see what I can see? What C.J. let you see?"

"Who the hell is C.J.?" Tish asked.

"Tish, just… shut up for a minute, would you please?" the Doctor said, as gently as he was capable, without looking at her. "Martha, concentrate."

Martha gazed at him through tears. Before she could quite grasp what he was saying, the name _C.J._ reverberated in her mind. It was the first time in months that either one of them had called their baby, their son who was to help save the universe, and die trying, by name. She whispered the name absently, as though it was something that had simply escaped when she exhaled.

After a beat, she obeyed the Doctor, she concentrated, and she closed her eyes. She thought of C.J. and the work he would do. She thought of a chain of events that would eventually bring him to his death in a basement on a faraway planet, and how he would know, just before expiring, that an early version of his time-travelling mother and father would cross paths with his corpse within a few months. She thought about how he knew this, the web of time and the continuum that would lead him to that conclusion, and the peace he must have felt, in the knowledge that he would have closure at last, even if he didn't live to see it. She saw him, in her mind's eye, writing, studying, keeping records of his whole life, feeling compelled to write his memoir, and not really understanding yet why. But Martha and the Doctor understood his compulsion, even if he never would, or even if he would only understand it in his dying moments…

She thought about the planets he would save, the large corners of the universe which would be safe because of the work he would do, with their help, and the incredible sacrifice he would make.

But it was not just facts that gave her this insight. It was something else. She could still see the invisible threads that bound all of it together – events, cause and effect across the vastness of the universe…

"Yes, I can still see it," she realised aloud, eyes wide.

The Doctor shushed her gently. It was a secret he didn't want the villain to hear.

"His consciousness is residually… _infusing_ me. Or something." She seemed mystified.

The Doctor nodded. "It'll do that. You won't lose that for a while."

"I should have known that."

He whispered, "Does it _feel _like the universe is doomed?"

"No," she replied in disbelief.

"Does it feel like a fixed point in time has collapsed?" he asked, referring to their son's birth. "In your gut, do you think the rules have been broken?"

She shook her head.

He smiled at her. "Good. We're all okay – all of us."

She smiled weakly, and nodded. "Okay."

"This is all very touching," Windselt, who the Doctor had genuinely almost forgotten was there, said from his corner of the room. "But I'm afraid you're missing the big picture."

"Yeah, I'm kind of afraid of that, too," Tish said. She whispered to Martha, "What are the two of you talking about?"

Martha leaned toward her sister and muttered, "You know a minute ago how Windselt said that without the baby, I'm useless to him? And the Doctor rather agreed?"

"Yes," Tish whispered.

"Apparently, Windselt is not as in-the-know as he thinks, and the Doctor just _went with it._"

"You mean, you get to _keep_ your special powers?"

"Not forever," Martha said. "But I've still got them for now. They came to me gradually when I got pregnant, and they leave me gradually after…"

Martha sniffled as the Doctor helped her get to her feet.

"Windselt, I think that Martha and I can both see the big picture just fine," the Doctor claimed. He looked at Martha. "And I think it's time for these ladies to leave, don't you?"

She searched his eyes. She didn't know what he had done, but it was something, and she trusted him. She trusted in the continual effects of C.J.'s Time Lord consciousness to tell her that the universe was not in peril just now. She knew that meant that the baby would be fine somehow, which meant that some of the immediate danger to Tish and the rest of the brides had faded.

"Linnea," the Doctor said to the most outspoken of the brides. "Show your friends the door, please."

In an instant, Linnea blinked, and seemed to disappear from existence. The girls gasped and tittered.

"Go!" said the Doctor. "Don't be afraid! Don't let yourselves be prisoners!"

One by one, the girls disappeared, until the last one left was Tish. She had her back to them, and she froze, all alone.

She turned, with tears in her eyes, to look at the Doctor. "You'd bloody well better know what you're doing, mate." With that, she made her move to leave, and disappeared as well.

Martha gasped a little bit, as her breath hitched and she held back from crying out for her sister, even though she trusted.

"Well, Windselt, I hope you're happy," the Doctor shouted. "You've disintegrated your entire cache of lost souls!"

"Admittedly I am galled to see them go, Doctor," Windselt lilted. "But _you _will do just fine. Aw, don't look like that – I only want you for your mind."

"Well, that's the thing. I really don't think you're that galled at all, because, honestly, I don't think they were your only insurance. A super-villain's got to have a secret stash someplace."

The ghostly villain did not look pleased, which let both the Doctor and Martha know that he had hit a nerve. The Doctor glanced at Martha meaningfully.

"You can talk all you want, Doctor, you're very good at that," said Windselt. "But it's just a way to delay."

The Doctor laughed. "Do you honestly think I don't know that? What is _talk_ for a bloke like me, but a way to keep the bad guy occupied while I contemplate my next move? Why do you think I do so much of it?"

"Enough," Windselt spat, actually moving toward them. "There will be no next move! I'll have that consciousness of yours now."

"Ah, but see, I was in your system poking about, and I know you don't have a download code for me," the Doctor told him, shrugging. "You were arrogant enough to think that you could just steal our child, and that would be that. So, if you want me for my mind… you'll have to catch me first!"

Like a flash, he bolted for the cloaked door, through which Martha had gone when she was trying to stall.

Windselt let out a shriek of disapproval, and a curse. He looked at Martha, trying to decide whether he wanted to stay and torment her, or stop the Doctor from sifting through the encrypted e-mails. In the end, the Doctor proved a more compelling adversary and he chose the latter, and disappeared through the door after the Doctor, still cursing.

The way Martha saw it, she had a few minutes to accomplish two things. One was to work out what the Doctor had done to Windselt's computer interface that made it "okay" that their son had been stolen, and all the women, including Tish. If she could know this, not only would it calm her, but she might then be able to predict his next move, and be able to help him.

The other task the Doctor had implanted as he was grandstanding for the wispy Windselt. Were the brides they had seen, indeed, the only thing he'd been keeping here? Or was he harbouring something else in this hellish lair of his?

She wasted no time getting into the computer. She reviewed the last few "transactions," and saw how, one by one, each of the girls had been taken, and just before that, the unborn baby. Twice now, Windselt had been able to use energy signatures, converted to computer code, to kidnap and/or kill this set of fifteen women who had done nothing to deserve this, other than buy a wedding gown from the wrong shop.

She went back further. She saw the moves the Doctor had made while she had been stalling Windselt in the e-mail maze. He had discovered a code that was Martha, but not Martha, and before that, had re-encoded all the girls' signatures, and his own. Though, he had just told Windselt that he _knew_ his code wasn't in the system.

If he was covering up this fact specifically, it might have been a message to Martha to check and see what he had done then…

"Oh, I love you, you clever, clever man" Martha whispered, internally thanking the Powers That Be for what remained of her Time Lord ability. Otherwise, she'd never have the eye required to see what he had done.

The Doctor had re-routed the data pathway out of this website, just before encoding his own energy signature, ensuring that any data Windselt downloaded, uploaded, replaced or deleted would be sent to Robert Oliver's hard drive. Therefore, all of the data that Windselt had manipulated after "replacing" Amanda Fineran was safe within her future brother-in-law's comptuer, ready for reconstitution… assuming she and the Doctor could work out how to do it.

She reckoned it would be a snap, though. They'd figured it out the other way round…

Though, as she looked at the data, Martha thought that if it had been her, she would have tried to boost Robert Oliver's wireless connection, to ensure the safest and most solid possible transport between the internet and the computer. However, as soon as she thought so, she realised that to do that from _inside _the internet would be difficult, and the same idea must have occurred to the Doctor. But it would have been more important to cloak the re-route so that Windselt wouldn't find and undo it before getting everyone safely out of there. There would not have been time to do both.

She felt infinitely better about things, knowing that one way or another, her son and her sister were safe. And actually, not being rotund and pregnant for the moment would ensure that she could run the way she used to, if she had to. She now could see the very bright bright side of this situation.

She put the computer back the way it had been. She knew that Windselt wasn't a complete imbecile, he would know that she'd be tinkering with it in his absence, but she didn't want to give him the satisfaction.

Now, to find whatever it was that Windselt was hiding… whatever _else_, anyway.

The Phlotigo being was no slouch at creating encrypted data sites as tributaries of Fiona Hart's original website, or digital perception filters, as she and the Doctor called them. Perhaps it was his barely-perceptible, non-corporeal existence that gave him a special sense of what made hidden data tick. The Doctor seemed to believe quite strongly that there was something else hidden here, so she reckoned all she needed to do was find it, in the corner of her eye.

She moved her eyes sideways, so as to see the left side of her peripheral vision. She turned very slowly and carefully, rotating her feet. When she had gone almost three-hundred-sixty degrees, she saw it. It was even better-hidden than the other encrypted doors – it was the same colour as the rest of the walls, and had no doorknob. It was as though Windselt wanted to hide it even from himself, as though he were ashamed it was there.

Martha pulled her brand-new personal Sonic Screwdriver from the pocket of her now incredibly loose black shorts, and aimed it at the smooth surface. The door opened with a groan, as if it were reluctant to reveal itself. She took a deep breath and tried to infuse herself with the courage to cope with whatever she might find inside.


	23. Chapter 23

**Waaaaay back at the beginning of this story, I warned you that it might get slightly twisted. Well, this is the scene I had in mind when I said that, though I had something much more dire in mind when I first conceived it.**

**Nevertheless, it gets a little dark in here... but Martha learns a new Time Lord trick, so all is not lost!**

* * *

><p><span>ONCE INSIDE<span>

The room was black as tar, impenetrably dark. Martha let the door shut behind her, and stood still for a moment, trying to let her eyes adjust. It took them longer than it should have to become accustomed to the gloom, and then all she could see was _something_ looming in front of her, moving only slightly. It seemed almost shiny, but not.

"Hello?" she said. The way her voice did not reverberate, but seemed swallowed up by the dark, she guessed that there was some kind of curtain in front of her, moving as a result of the door swinging open and shut behind her. She reached out in front of her and took a couple of steps, and felt, as she had suspected, a sheet of velvet. She put both hands out to her sides to see if, by chance, the curtain was only as wide as her arm-span, but no such luck. She reckoned it could possibly go on forever, given the infinite potential "space" of the internet.

The only thing she knew for sure was that _something_ was in here, and it was something that Windselt wanted hidden. It was just possible that it was a blank page, but it _had_ to harbour some kind of data, because with this dark velvet curtain, the creepy Phlotigian had gone to some lengths to conceal it.

Since she didn't know how long the curtain would go on, she decided to see if she could duck under it. She lifted up the hem of the great piece of fabric and crouched, then inched beneath it. She noted with slight bemusement that if she were six months pregnant, this task would be much more olympian.

If possible, the space on the other side of the curtain was even darker than where she had come in. She gave a sigh, and pulled out her trusty Sonic Screwdriver, and simply held it aloft, trusting the blue light to let her see just enough to tell her where to go.

And it did.

The room, as it turned out, was huge – much bigger than any of the website rooms she had seen in the mall area. The ceilings were high and the floor was vast, reminiscent of a university gymnasium.

And the only reason she could tell where the far wall was, was that she could see a series of figures leaning against the wall. They seemed humanoid to her, perhaps sitting down or crouching.

"Hello?" she repeated. "Is someone there?"

There was no answer. There was the inky dark, and silence.

She decided to extinguish the Sonic's light for the moment, as she had seen no obstacle between herself and the far wall, and if these shadowy figures were malevolent, the less they knew about her whereabouts, the better.

She walked forward, quite carefully, trying very hard not to make any noise. It was not easy, given that she was wearing the strappy high-heeled sandals that she had put on for Tish's hen party. Truth be told, her feet were killing her from carrying extra weight for most of the night on inefficient footwear, but she was unwilling to kick them off, not knowing what else lurked in the dark.

After a few minutes, she began to feel like a piece of plankton in the ocean, aimless and a sitting duck for anything that knew the deep better than she. So she let the Sonic buzz once more, and found that she was even closer than she thought to the figures against the wall. She squinted to see them, and she gasped.

Walking forward toward them, she could see that they were women, all dressed in their wedding gowns, eight of them. But something was seriously wrong.

The woman on the far left simply lay limp on her side, as though someone had propped her up against the wall, and she had simply fallen sideways like a ragdoll. At first, Martha thought she was dead, but she knelt down to check the pulse, and found it beating fast beneath her fingers. Upon closer inspection, she could see that the girl was looking at her. She was alive and conscious.

"What's your name, sweetheart?" Martha asked gently.

The woman only stared at Martha, blinking, but did not answer.

"Can you sit up?"

The woman did not respond at all.

"Can you wiggle your toes?"

Same result.

"Okay, well, my name is Martha Jones," she said, patting the woman's hand. "I'm here with my friend, and we're going to get you out of here. Can you understand me? Blink twice, if you can."

The woman blinked twice, very clearly.

"Dear God, how long have you been lying here like this?" she muttered, knowing she wouldn't get an answer just now.

She moved to the right. The next woman was leaning against the wall, staring straight ahead, her mouth gaping slightly. Her gown was sleeveless, and the entire left side was covered with blood. Martha could see that the left arm was missing, and some tendons were hanging from the shoulder, as though the appendage had been ripped off, rather than severed.

Swallowing hard and choking down a sob, she reached forward and checked this woman's pulse as well. Also alive. Normally she would have asked herself how it is that blood was still pumping through this woman's heart, given the giant open wound. But she accepted, without really thinking about it, that the laws of physics and medicine perhaps do not always strictly apply in this environment.

"Can you understand me?" she asked. "Blink twice if you can."

There was no blinking.

Martha sighed and moved again to the right. The third and fourth women were leaning sideways against each other. One of them was completely bald, and the right side of her head had been gouged out very cleanly, as if something square had simply been pressed into her skull. The bone had bent along with the skin – no blood, no mess. Martha examined her a bit, and saw that the right eye was still there, it was just pressed in. The other woman looked as though her body parts had been scrambled. Her left arm stuck out of her right shoulder, so she essentially had two arms on one side, and a foot stuck out of the décolletage of her dress. Her nose was missing – Martha wondered where on her body it had ended up.

Both of these women were alive as well.

"Can you understand me?" she asked the woman with the deformed head.

"Y-y-yaaaaah," the woman groaned. "Ah-ah-aaaahh…" she began, before giving up.

"Good, good," Martha said, gaining hope. "What's your name?"

"Ja… ja…" she started. "Ja-jjjjj…"

"It's okay," Martha sighed. "Don't try to talk, if it hurts."

She asked the woman with the scrambled parts, "Can you understand me?"

Her mouth gaped, and she nodded very exaggeratedly. Her head flopped forward and back like a baby just learning to control her neck muscles. A line of drool fell from her lips, and she looked at Martha with lucid brown eyes.

Number five, like number two, had part of her white gown covered in blood, and Martha could only see the foot and outline of one leg sticking out from the full skirt. She reckoned this one had had her leg unceremoniously severed, but she didn't inspect any further. This woman could blink at her in understanding, but couldn't move otherwise.

The sixth woman had a hole, about five inches in diameter through her chest, a clean, non-bloody anomaly, and one could see all the way to the wall on the other side of her. She had another, similar hole, though smaller through her left shoulder, and another one through her right bicep. Martha suspected these holes were all over her body, and probably her brain. She was totally unresponsive, but like the others, she was alive.

Number seven seemed to be missing the entire lower half of her body, as the silk sheath dress she was wearing seemed to be lying flat on the floor, below the waist. She could stutter the first syllable of her name, much like woman number three.

The final woman looked normal, even turned her head and smiled at Martha as she approached. Martha asked, hopefully, "Can you understand me?"

The woman stared straight ahead and responded, "Milkshake!"

"Excuse me?"

"Chocolate and salmon," she said. "Elm tree with Chevrolet pants."

"Can you tell me your name?"

"Winston Churchill. Warning! No lampshades allowed in the raspberry fountain."

Martha sighed. Without having to wonder too hard, she reckoned that these women were the first few stolen, and the result of trial-and-error on the part of Windselt. The first eight women, he was not able to pin down their _exact_ energy signatures, whether it was because he had not yet discovered the excitement factor, and/or how to create that excitement, or some other horrible device he had yet to contemplate, Martha did not know. He had tried to upload them when their data was not quite complete. She likened it in her mind to trying to open a file in the wrong format: the data is corrupted and unusable. A picture file accidentally brought up as a Word document might appear as eighty-two pages of nonsense numbers and symbols, meaningless to most people and computers.

That's what she was looking at – corrupted data. Nonsense. Unsavable.

She had already promised the first woman that she and the Doctor would get them out of there, but, looking them over, she knew that for the most part, they would not survive in the real world – especially not the two with severed limbs. They would die within the first few minutes upon arriving, and would do so in horrible agony. No medical professional would know what the hell to do with the non-bloody anomalies, and they would likely be locked up for study. And the first and last, catatonic and crazy, they would be classified with diseases they don't have, and treated in some institution by well-meaning, but totally misguided, doctors.

But she had promised. And she knew that, in this situation, the Doctor would already be pacing like a madman, trying to come up with a way to save them. What Martha knew for certain was that these women couldn't stay here – to leave them here would be cruel. The other brides (save Amanda Fineran) would be safe because they were intact – why should these women have to suffer in this dark room for the rest of eternity just because some wanker from the Phlotigo had used them as guinea pigs in a tragic computer experiment?

So, she reckoned, for the women with missing limbs, the only two for whom the future seemed certain, death would likely seem a welcome alternative. The others? Well, she and the Doctor would worry about that once they were safe in the real world. Could they realistically be returned to their families? What would the families do with them? Perhaps the Doctor knew of some other planet they could go to for rehabilitation, where they could live fuller and happier lives than the ones waiting for them on Earth.

She hoped for the best, and slapped herself, reminding herself that she hadn't much time.

She couldn't physically carry them, and they had no power nor impetus of their own to leave this horrible place. Not for the first time, she asked herself "What would the Doctor do?" Now that she had some of his perceptions and abilities, she was able, more effectively than ever, to think the way he did, process the way he did.

So she thought backwards. What's the goal, the best case scenario? To bind them together somehow, and transport them as a unit, in some non-physical way.

How does one accomplish this?

Well, non-physical was the perfect sort of transport for this situation. They were all basically non-physical anyway – they were data. How does data move in the internet? In this case, walking. That wouldn't work.

How else does data move? How do multiple pieces of separate data get transported together?

"A zip file," Martha said aloud, looking at the eight helpless women. "How do I write all of your codes, all of your energy signatures into a kind of zip file? And where would I get such a thing?"

She knew there _had_ to be a way. She didn't believe that a Time Lord could see across time, perceive energy signatures in broad air in the middle of London and understand every language in existence, but not be able to compress these girls' data somehow. There was a way, she just wasn't familiar enough with her abilities to find it.

So she focused for the moment on what she _did _know how to do.

She went to the woman on the far left, the one whose eyes betrayed cogence and consciousness, but whose body was entirely paralysed except for her eyelids. She wanted to check and see if she could perceive any physical damage, such as concussion, something that wasn't immediately apparent to the naked eye. She took the woman by the shoulders and sat her upright. She put one hand on the side of her head, and shone the light from the sonic straight into her eye. This caused the eye to blink wildly and water, so she stopped. She kept the light on, but set the sonic at her side, and took the woman's head in both of her hands, and stared into her eyes, not having much hope that she would find anything in the dim light.

And she didn't see anything. But she felt something.

Something took hold of her being, and seemed to cloud her senses for just a moment, before clearing again, and giving her the distinct suspicion that she was being observed, and not just by the ladies before her. Instinctively, she closed her eyes, and when she opened them, the paralysed woman stood before her, in her wedding gown, looking beatific and totally functional.

"Oh my," Martha gasped. "What's happening?"

The woman only then seemed to realise that Martha was there, and she frowned. "I don't know," she said. "You tell me."

Martha looked around. They seemed to be in the hallway of a house with white walls and white carpet, with doors leading to bedrooms with perfectly made beds and windows that let the sun in.

"I'm not sure," Martha answered. "Is this your home?"

"Yes," said the woman. "It's my sanctuary. Or at least, it has been since I was brought here. Wherever _here _is."

"Oh," Martha exclaimed, her eyes popping open. "I'm inside your mind!"

The woman smiled. "How is that possible?"

"Well, I'm… it's a long story. My name is Martha Jones, what's yours?"

"Virginia," she answered. "Virginia King."

"Well, this is brilliant. Can you walk around in here, Virginia?"

"I can do anything in here."

"Good," Martha said. She looked behind her, and she imagined another door. "Then follow me through this door."

"Why?"

"Because it leads to my mind," Martha told her. "Your essence will be envelopped by mine, and I'll be able to get you out of here."

"Really?"

"I think so." Though, Martha felt uneasy. She didn't know for sure that this would work, but it seemed the best solution for now.

"How does that work?"

"You're trapped on the internet, Virginia."

"Excuse me?"

"Your energy signature was pinpointed, wrongly, as it turns out, because it damaged you. And from there, your energy was converted to data, and uploaded to the internet. But since you were corrupted, the guy who did it stuck you in this room and encrypted it so that no-one would know it was there… but he didn't count on me and the Doctor! So… if it's all about energy, essence, then this should work. It's all intangible anyway. If I can absorb your energy this way, then I can get you out."

"Are you sure?"

What would the Doctor say? "No, but would you rather stay here and never try?"

"Lead the way, Martha Jones," Virginia said with a smile.

"Great," Martha said, opening the door to her mind. "Hope you don't mind some company in there, 'cause I just became a zip file!"

"What?"

"Never mind."

Martha followed her through the door, and then opened her eyes for real. She was back in the dank, dark room where the corrupted data of eight women had been held cruelly for who knew how long. Except now there were only seven. She smiled, and put her hands on the next woman's head.


	24. Chapter 24

WHEN IT WAS TOO LATE

That damned Doctor.

Windselt had been certain that he could outwit him, because he had the advantage of having studied both the Time Lord and his temporarily-gifted human companion, for several months, without them knowing. He had grown up hearing about Time Lords and the power they posess, but he had only known about it as an abstract thing, the way school children _do _learn about far away concepts and events to which they cannot relate. But through their off-handed comments both to each other and to Tish, he had learned the practical applications for Time Lord abilities, and learned how Martha had come by her abilities, and became ravenous in his desire to have those powers for himself.

But the Doctor had slipped into the encrypted e-mail room, and had managed to disappear. Windselt had intentionally kept that room linear, like a cornfield, with curtains running between each message in a straight line. But even running at full pelt down the side of the room and searching the well-lit aisles had not revealed the infernal man. Windselt reckoned now that the Doctor knew that this website was a veritable maze of encrypted information, and had found one of the hundreds of side rooms.

He also reckoned that the Doctor's little foray into the forbidden reaches of the site was a distraction so that Martha could accomplish something else. In a pinch, he had decided to go after the Doctor because Martha, now that she was separated from her offspring, was a regular human being, and therefore, very little threat to him. But it had now been over an hour since he'd begun looking for the Doctor, and he had had enough of that. Besides, even a human could wreak a fair bit of havoc if given enough time, and according to the Doctor, Martha had been extraordinarily clever, even without the gift of Time Lord senses. So he went back to the main room, the base of operations for Windselt's sinister plan to become corporeal and/or god-like.

Martha Jones was not there. Nor was anyone else.

Over the past couple hours, since the Doctor and Martha had arrived, he'd got used to frustration. He had ended up having to replace the data of all of his hostages, just to prove a point – and he hated that! All he'd wanted was a Time Lord's essence! He'd had to replace the data of one of those as well, when he'd taken Martha's baby from her. Now, all that remained was the Doctor. Now that he was back in his main room, he knew that he could use Martha to draw the Doctor out again, if only he knew where she'd gone…

The first thing she would have done was go over to the computer to find out what she could. And then she would have…

"Oh, no," Windselt sighed. The Black Room. It was the "forbidden" element closest to the computer because it was Windselt's greatest and most shameful secret.

He knew the room like the back of his hand, since he had built it, so he went inside, knowing exactly how to lift the curtain, and knowing exactly where the corrupted data was hidden.

But he didn't need to know, necessarily, because once the curtain was gone, a blue light shone from way on the other side of the room. It had to be Martha Jones – had to be. He walked toward the light and got closer, stepping lightly, so as not to alert her to his presence.

As his eyes adjusted to the bizarre blue illumination, he saw, with horror, that seven of the eight corrupted women he had been keeping had disappeared. Now it was only Martha and Olivia, the final woman he had tried to upload, only to fragment her mind. Olivia spoke nothing but nonsense after he had brought her in, and it had been through her that he had discovered at last what he was doing wrong. His next upload had been successful, and the next bride had come to him with her body and mind intact.

Martha was holding her head, and both of them had their eyes shut.

"Miss Jones," Windselt hissed. He wanted her attention because he bloody well wanted to know what had happened to the other seven!

She did not answer. Curious.

So he waited and watched. After a few moments, Olivia's body seemed to turn transparent and wispy, much like his. Little by little over the next ten seconds, it disappeared, and seemed to be assimilated by Martha. In a moment, he was completely alone with Martha Jones in this dark room, with only a tiny blue light from a sonic screwdriver.

"Well, well, Miss Jones," he said softly.

She started and gasped, turning to look at him with horror in her eyes. "Windselt!"

"Perhaps you're not as useless as I thought."

She got to her feet and aimed the sonic at him. "Back off or you're history, mate."

He smiled. "Oh, not useless at all," he lilted. "In fact, I think you'll do just fine."

As something took hold of her, she closed her eyes and concentrated. "Doctor! Find me!" she shouted inside her head.

But she could feel her strength fading. A simple telepathic message from one Time Lord to another was not a big deal, as long as both Time Lords could count on their infinite abilities. Martha could not. Her powers were merely residual at this point, since her child had been taken, and she figured now that she had used up most of her reserves by diving into the minds of the torn-up hostages.

Nevertheless, she tried again…

* * *

><p>"Blimey, what a mess," the Doctor commented, picking up a chunk of plaster, then tossing it aside. The room looked like a dump truck filled with jagged pieces of dry wall had been unloaded inside it.<p>

He wondered why Windselt had never learned to delete pages, rather than simply tuck them away. This room looked like a piece of the site that he had built, and then had collapsed or been destroyed somehow, and then further encrypted.

Then, as if from light years away, something echoed in the corner of his mind. No words could be heard, and no particular information or tone – only an echo.

In a place like this, it could be anything. It could be data scratching at him to assimilate for some reason, it could be some kind of "fishing" ware that Windselt had sent after him. It could be Robert Oliver's anti-virus software trying to pin him down.

He stood still and listened, tried to hear it again.

And he did. Tiny, barely detectable, it said, "Doctor... fff…."

"What?" he said aloud. He knew it was a daft thing to do, but he was now certain that there was a message in the signal. Something really _was_ cloying at him.

* * *

><p>As far as Robert Oliver could tell, the entire encryped page from the Audacious Attire website had gone blank. The pictures of the brides, including Tish's had disappeared. There was no sign of the Doctor nor Martha, nor of any other sentient being that he knew of. He wondered if perhaps they had moved to some other part of the site to which he could not follow them.<p>

A message came up on his screen, a dialogue box from his anti-virus software. "Data detected: Code of 'the Doctor'. Click OK to delete. More info?"

Robert Oliver smiled. His software had located the Doctor! He clicked on 'More info' and discovered another encrypted URL where the Doctor seemed to have gone. He copied the URL, and closed the dialogue box without clicking 'OK.' Before he hit paste, however, he decided to refresh the page one more time.

"Ha!" he cried out. There was Martha!

But something definitely didn't look right. It was a photo of her looking incredibly uncomfortable, and rather thin – as if she weren't pregnant. This was worrying to him because as he understood it, the pictures of the uncomfortable brides had appeared on the site because they were being held as prisoners of some sort. Did this mean that Martha had been taken in exchange for the other girls, for Tish and the others?

He copied the URL to the browser. He had to find the Doctor.

* * *

><p>"How did you even do that?" Martha asked. "You're like a ghost."<p>

Windselt smirked. "This is the internet, love. I can program myself to do almost anything – confined to this website, of course."

Martha sat against a wall in the main room of Windselt's encrypted kingdom, and looked with curiosity at the twine that bound her ankles and wrists together. It had seemed to her that wispy Windselt had become corporeal just for the few moments it took to drag her from the dark room back to his lair and tie her up. She reminded herself that the laws of physics didn't necessarily apply here… whereas before, this knowledge had been instinctual and she had been able to act within this world easily, feel it out… almost like a Time Lord.

But it was slipping away.

She was, however, a clever enough woman to know what Windselt wanted from her. He had witnessed the final assimilation she had performed as a "zip" file, with Olivia ensconcing herself within Martha's mind. It must have dawned on Windselt then that Martha's Time Lord mojo would suit him just fine, and he wouldn't need the Doctor. Ironically, he had witnessed, basically, the thing that had sapped the very energy that he wanted.

The good news was, she now really had nothing for him to steal.

The bad news was, she had no idea what he would do to her when he figured out that she really _was_ useless now.

* * *

><p>The Doctor was making his way back to the door that led through to the room that was off from the encrypted rows of e-mails. He was now in four-rooms-deep from the main stem of Audacious Attire, the face of the company that everyone could see. The debris from the room having collapsed was everywhere, and the lighting wasn't great, so he had to be careful not to trip. He didn't fancy breaking his ankle here, nor getting concussion. While he thought about it, he reminded himself that he couldn't act normally in this world and put his life on the line like usual; he was fairly certain he wouldn't be able to regenerate here. The data would not convert quickly enough not to scramble and disperse.<p>

He moved slowly and carefully. Once he was back in the e-mail room, he knew he had about a quarter of a mile's walk back to the door which would lead into Windselt's main base.

And then he heard a blaring siren.

He stopped in his tracks and looked about. He had no idea what was causing it.

He walked forward, stayed on his path, and tried to understand what was happening.

Before long, the siren became a voice shouting, "Doctor! Doctor!"

"What? Who is that?"

"Doctor! Find a way to look out! See out! I have a message!" As it spoke, the voice became clearer.

"Robert Oliver?"

The Doctor began running. He remembered seeing a computer terminal as he had entered the hugely curtained e-mail room.

He found it, and looked at the screen. There was Robert Oliver, calling to him, through a microphone.

"I'm here!" the Doctor shouted. "What are you doing?"

"Martha's in trouble!" Robert Oliver shouted.

"What? How do you know?"

"Her picture came up on that main page, and she looks really awkward… like the brides did. Doesn't that mean something's got her? Doesn't that mean she's a prisoner?"

The Doctor buried both hands in his har. "Yeah. Yeah, it probably does. Shit. He's worked it out."

"Worked what out?"

"That he can steal her mind," the Doctor answered absently. He stared at the door. He knew if he went through it, he would be in the same room with Martha and her captor, and he had to mightily resist the urge to do so. He needed a plan first, and didn't want Windselt to know exactly where he was.

"Steal her mind? What are you on about?"

"Never mind. Thank you, Robert Oliver."

"No, wait, Doctor," said the man outside with a worried tenor. "What's happened to Tish and the others?"

"Check your hard drive. Sorry, mate, I've got to let you go, okay? I need time to think."


	25. Chapter 25

AFTER A TIME

The Doctor stepped forward and opened the door, just a smidge, just enough to see and hear. He peered through the narrow opening and saw Martha sitting on the floor against the wall, bound at her wrists and ankles. This sight seemed to him the last straw. One kind of insidious monster snatches people and consciousnesses using data – that was bad enough. But it's a total savage who keeps them prisoner by tying them up.

He clenched his teeth. Unable to stop himself, he whispered, "Oh, you are _so_ going down."

"What did you do?" Windselt asked her calmly, pacing slowly back and forth like a proper villain.

"I assimilated them into my mind," Martha answered with a confused frown. "I guess. I mean, I think."

The Doctor smiled a bit, and again, whispered to himself, "Clever, clever girl."

"How did you do it?"

"I don't know, I guess I had some residual Time Lord mojo left, after you took..." she sighed.

Windselt stopped and looked at her squarely, with angled eyebrows. "Tell me how it works! Tell me now!"

"I don't know!" she shouted.

"What?" he shouted back. "How can you not know?"

"I just don't! I did it – that's all I know!"

He put both hands on his hips. "Well,one thing is for sure. You can't remain very long with all of those broken girls in your mind, or you will implode somehow," he announced. Then he cocked his head to one side. "Won't you?"

She smiled in spite of herself, and shrugged as much as she could. "Why are you asking me? I have no idea!"

"Rubbish!" he cried out. "Tell me everything, or so help me!"

"So help you what? You'll disperse my data? Kill me? Aren't you going to do that anyway?"

"Playing fast and loose with your life. Very brave, and also very stupid. I didn't think the Doctor was wont to surround himself with imbeciles, let alone sleep with one."

She chuckled, dispairing for anything better to do or say. "At this stage, Windselt, you know everything that I know."

"Oh, to hell with you, Martha Jones," Windselt said angrily. "I'll bloody well figure it out for myself!" He took a deep breath, and seemed to become corporeal. Martha reckoned that this was exactly how he had been able to tie her up and bring her here.

He stalked toward her and yanked her sideways by the arm, and tried to drag her toward the computer. She had no leverage to fight, nor to move along with him – she was just a bit better than dead weight.

"Cooperate, or I will take you by the hair!" he yelled.

The Doctor, still watching the action, felt another mad surge of anger well up in his chest, but he waited. He didn't know quite what the fiend was planning on doing now, and he knew that most of the innocent bystanders were safe. Martha was, after all, his partner. Though he loved her and hated seeing her manhandled, she had taken on this life with him, and he reckoned she could handle a bit of the rough, especially if it would reveal more about the bad guy's plans.

Martha was trying her best to move her feet, though neither the Doctor nor Windselt could tell whether she was trying to work against being moved across the room, or whether she was trying to speed the process along.

Windselt all but dumped Martha behind the main computer, then his figure went back to the see-through, wispy vision, as he usually appeared. She lay on the floor on her side, still bound, watching. He punched in a few numbers, and then took the microphone from the desk.

"Thank you, Doctor," he muttered. "How very kind of you to make this so convenient for me."

Martha had seen when she was snooping through Windselt's computer, that the Doctor had rigged it so that a breath into the microphone would make a perfect imprint of a person's energy signature-cum-data code. She knew what Windselt wanted from her, and he wasn't going to get it.

She may not be a Time Lord for the moment, and perhaps even if Windselt "replaced" her data, she would simply wind up in Robert Oliver's hard drive. But she had witnessed him becoming flesh and bone. She knew what he could do. And she had the distinct feeling that if he found out that she really didn't have anymore powers, he would resort to a punishment that was a bit more hands-on than data transfers.

He held the micronphone near her mouth. "Blow."

She held her breath and shook her head, not daring to let out a breath, or to speak.

"Do it!" he screamed, losing patience.

This ellicited no response from her, other than silence.

"Do it, or I will draw out your Doctor, and force him to give up his powers for you," he threatened. Then he smiled. "It will be so romantic, just like _Superman II._ Won't that be nice?"

She rolled to her left, away from him, and attempted to sit up. She was in good shape, but it had been a while since she'd used her stomach muscles properly, and she strained rather unduly.

Windselt let out a cry of frustration at her. He took another deep breath, this time concentrated a little harder, and became corporeal again. From watching the effort this took, the Doctor guessed that he couldn't do it forever at will. It was sapping energy from him.

He pulled her down, and forced her lie on her back. Martha hit her head on the floor as he did this, and she let out a slight grunt, but didn't dare make any other noise. He knelt with one leg across her hips, and one leg across her chest and arms. She gasped with the pressure, but tried very hard not to cry out or let out any air.

Windselt pressed his elbow against her forehead, now properly restraining her, holding down virtually every part of her. He shoved the microphone against her mouth and said, "You'll have to exhale sometime."

That was it for the Doctor.

Within a few seconds, he typed a message into the terminal at his side, then threw open the door.

"Let go of her, right now," the Doctor growled.

"I don't think so," Windselt replied whimsically. "I'll have those powers off her, one way or another."

"Let her go right now, and I might not kill you." Having watched Martha dragged and abused by an alien foe had been difficult to do, but he had put up with it for a purpose. Now, he was done.

Windselt laughed. "Oh, Doctor. You forget, I know you. Your people, peaceful to a fault. And you… the universe's great flower child. _Love everyone, never kill, no violence, ever!_"

The Doctor made eye-contact with Martha for a couple of seconds, and her eyes were pleading. He looked toward her legs. They were flailing as much as possible, but the angle of Windselt's body would not let her move much.

"Take heart, Doctor," he said. "It's better her than you. Besides, I'm more than just a wisp of data now, that you can just dispatch with your sonic screwdriver. I am…"

He was interrupted by a blow to the face from the rubber toe of a white Converse trainer. He recoiled and flew back into the wall. Martha let out a huge exhale, grateful to have air flowing through her lungs again.

"Blimey!" the Doctor exclaimed. "You talk too much, mate. And that's saying something, coming from me."

Windselt blinked several times and seemed to try to gather himself. He seemed shocked. He put his hand beneath his nose and felt a trickle of blood, and looked at it with total bewilderment. "That… hurts! And look – blood! I have blood?"

The Doctor knelt and began to untie Martha. "That'll happen when you get yourself kicked in the face."

"No, but… it hurts! I feel pain! How inappropriate is that?" the now-once-again wispy being continued. "Like a common _corporeal_ being! I was kicked, and now I feel discomfort – actual pain! How dirty I feel! How low class! How…"

"Oh, shut up!" the Doctor whined. He pointed the sonic at the babbling man and literally muted him. Windselt put his hands to his throat, again in wonder, and seemed to try in vain to yell.

"You all right?" the Doctor asked Martha, helping her stand up.

She smiled weakly and nodded, just barely. "Considering."

"Don't worry," he said, before taking her by the jaw with both hands and planting a firm kiss on her. "We'll get everyone back the way they're supposed to be. Everyone." He looked at her meaningfully, searched her eyes.

She gulped. She had almost forgotten in all the chaos, when she had begun this journey, she had been pregnant. Now she wasn't. She nodded again at him.

"Oh, but Doctor, I have to tell you," Martha said, suddenly remembering. "I have…" she couldn't quite articulate what she wanted to say. She put both hands on her head and looked at him desperately. She had eight women's energy signatures within her mind, and she couldn't find the words.

"I know," he told her. "I heard what you did. Heard you talking about it."

"Yeah," she sighed. "Why didn't you tell me before that we could do that?"

He shrugged. "Never came up. Now you know. I'm just glad you worked it out in time to…"

"But that's just it, Doctor. It wasn't in time, really. Those women – they're not right. I don't know if you'll ever be able to get them back the way they're supposed to be."

"What do you mean, _they're not right_?"

"Well…" she said, looking round the room, trying to think fast. She was noticing a marked slow-down of her faculties ever since being dragged here by Windselt. She hated it – she had always considered herself rather intelligent. God, what dolts humans must seem to the Doctor. She was just now gaining perspective on that.

She was _inside the internet_. She had surreal tools all around her, things that she never would have thought possible. She had met a non-corporeal being who could literally _program_ himself to do almost anything he wanted. Entire human beings could disappear with a keystroke, be uploaded and downloaded and changed with just the right set of ones and zeroes. There had to be _some_ way of expressing, showing the Doctor what she meant when she said that the women were "not right."

"Is there a way to see back in time?" she wanted to know. An hour ago, she would have known the answer to that question.

"Not a specific moment, not like what you're talking about. Not from here, anyway," he told her. "I'd need the TARDIS."

She sighed with frustration.

Just then, they heard Windselt make a noise. Whatever silencing cloak the Doctor had put on him, he'd managed to undo it.

The Doctor wandered over to deal with Windselt.

Martha glanced around the room again, searching. Then it hit her, as she watched the Doctor kneel down and incapacitate the villain with a flick of the sonic. The single greatest tool she had, the single greatest thing in the universe, was a Time Lord.

"Doctor! You can see them!" she shouted, kneeling down with him. She grabbed his hands and pressed them to her temples. He reacted with surprise. "Just look! You can do that, right?"

But suddenly she felt funny. She began to tingle. It was a familiar sensation, but it was building much more slowly.

He looked her up and down. "Yes, I could have, but I can't now, Martha," he said to her quickly. "I'm sorry – you're being downloaded. I'll see you on the other side. Okay? I love you."

Her face melted into worry, and hurt. "What? You told Robert Oliver to download me? How could you? I've got to stay with you!"

He'd known she would probably react this way. And he felt the hypocrisy of this decision, given that he had, just a few minutes earlier, decided to wait to "rescue" her from Windselt, because she was his partner and it had been her choice to fight alongside him. But there were now things to consider, over and above Martha's hurt feelings or personal comfort, and he was certain that she would understand. If not now, then later.

"You're not alone in there, Martha," he said, trying to touch her head, which had already gone a bit transparent. "We have others to think about. Plus, sorry love, but you're not equipped anymore to have other people bouncing around inside your brain. Haven't you noticed your thinking slowing down?"

"I just thought it was because I'm not an honorary Time Lord anymore."

"Well, sort of. But not just that. It's because you must have worn down your Time Lord energy assimilating them, which turned you back into a regular (if extraordinary) human being, which means you can't hold them for long without burning up."

"That's why? So, as a Time Lord on my own, I'm of absolutely no use? That's a catch… what is it?"

"A Catch-22. Martha, you're really slowing down. You have to get out of here now. If you stop talking, it'll go faster."

She sighed. "Why is it so slow?"

"He's downloading you as a Zip file," he answered. "It takes longer. All those pieces of living data inside you…"

She faded into almost an invisible screen of white. "Oh, Doctor! Reconstitute us in the TARDIS!"

"Why?"

"It's all wrong, Doctor! Just do it!" she shouted before disappearing completely.

"Alone at last," the villain said in a deep, silky voice as he got to his feet. Once again, he had managed to reprogram himself.

The Doctor turned and faced him, without a word.

"I hadn't wanted it to come to this, Doctor, but I suppose it is for the best. Your Time Lord brain will be much more effective for me than that of your girlfriend. Especially now. Humans – pff."

"You were right to hope it wouldn't come to this, Windselt."

"Why's that?"

"Because you messed with my family. You don't want to be left alone with me."

"Oh, come off it. I know who you are. I know you won't…"

"What? Resort to violence?" the Doctor asked, with a smirk. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stepped forward a couple of feet. "How's your nose, Windselt?"

Instinctively, Windselt touched his bloodied nose and scowled. But then he stood up straight and smirked right back at the Doctor. His corporeal form faded back to ghostly. "My nose is much better, thanks. Especially now it has no nerves."

The Doctor crossed his arms and sighed, waiting to see what would happen next.

"If you're going to resort to violence, you'll have to be a lot cleverer than…"

The Doctor coolly pressed a button on the sonic, and Windselt's molecules, such as they were, began to hum.

"I don't like committing mindless acts of destruction, but I will," the Doctor growled.

"You wouldn't."

"A flick of my thumb would disperse your data throughout the entire internet. You'll never see yourself again."

"Unless I do what?"

"Oh, I'm not giving you an ultimatum. I'm just pissed off. You've already done the damage."

"Hm. I suppose I have."

"Yep. You've basically killed (or tried to kill, anyway) seventeen people, one of whom is my child, another of whom is his mother. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't splatter your ones and zeroes all over the walls."

"One good reason?" Windselt asked. He moved carefully one step, and planted himself in front of his computer terminal. The Doctor could see what he was about to do – he knew that Windselt's computer held his data code, since he had put it there – but he knew where all data would end up, should it come to that.

The Doctor's body began to hum as well.

"How predictable of you," the Doctor said.

"I believe we are now at an impasse," said Windselt, his finger on the button that he believed would replace the Doctor's data.

"I guess we are," the Doctor agreed.

"It's a question of who is the quicker draw."

"I guess it is."

They stood staring at each other for several moments, each with his finger on the trigger, as it were.

But as he tended to do, the Doctor had one last trick up his sleeve. And as they tended to do, the villain had underestimated the Doctor.

The ghostly being taunted, "Come on Doctor. Disperse me. Kill me. Rid the world of my menacing presence. You know you want to!"

The Time Lord flashed the sonic screwdriver at Windselt's computer, and caused a minor explosion out the back of the monitor. In panic, Winselt hit the button and disappeared.

"Oh, go download yourself," the Doctor muttered, shoving the sonic back into his pocket.


	26. Chapter 26

**This isn't the most interesting thing I've ever written, but over the past year, I've really grown fond of Robert Oliver, and felt that he deserved a bit more time. I hope you find this amusing, at least...**

* * *

><p><span>AND THEN<span>

Robert Oliver Ephraim was clearly no luddite, nor was he close-minded to the possibilities of the universe. Though he had poo-pooed the idea of aliens when the Doctor and Martha were in his study, he actually believed that that there was little chance that humans could be alone in the cosmos. Although, until today, he'd been on the fence about whether they had ever actually made contact with the Earth. He believed that most things were possible until disproven, so that also included ghosts, ESP, time travel and the like.

He had actually spent a good deal of time in his life thinking about such things, both at university and afterwards in graduate school, and even a bit in his adult life as a systems analyst. In spite of his mostly computer-related education, he had received almost enough credits in philosophy for a second major, and that included classes concentrating on supernatural phenomena and the subjectivity of truth. Some Buddhists and Hindus believed that different dimensions and digital technology went hand-in-hand, that molecular biology, astrophysics and metaphysics were all really the same thing…

He had spent countless hours in pubs and coffee shops with mates, classmates and mere acquaintances poring over these questions, arguing over whether the laws of physics need apply on all plains of existence…

Suffice it to say, he was no novice in the matters of the weird.

But what he had seen today… never in a million years would he have thought it possible, nor would it ever have occurred to him to wonder. One minute, two people were standing before him, and the next minute, they had disappeared. And within an hour, he had literally seen them appear on the internet, as though the internet were a physical place! As though they had become data, and he had simply uploaded them. It was as though some kind of otherworldly technology had been applied to his computer, to standard "human" channels of data transfer, and _voilà: _a _literally_ navigable world wide web. A whole new world. No flippin' way.

Of course, they had tried to explain some of this, but Robert Oliver had only been half-listening, and had eventually just told them he didn't want to know. Partly because he thought they were insane, and partly because he was distracted by the need to save Tish. Because no matter how hare-brained their scheme seemed to him, he believed that Martha, at least, loved her sister and wouldn't do anything to _hurt_ her, so why would she invent or stage a kidnapping, and what did they have to lose?

Well, based on what he had seen happening online, a lot, apparently. At least one of the kidnapped brides had been deleted (or replaced, or dispersed, or one of the interestingly horrible fates the Doctor and the bloke known as "Windselt" seemed to be tossing about as threats). And for a while, he'd thought that Martha's baby as well as Tish and the other brides had met with the same fate, until the Doctor had told him to check his hard drive. New files had appeared there, labelled with womens' names, including "Letitia Jones." He didn't dare try to open them without the Doctor to tell him what to do, but he did try to look at their properties; he could not understand any of the language that came up. It didn't look like the same programming language the Doctor had used to upload himself and Martha, but rather, something else equally confusing. Not for the first time, Robert Oliver wondered idly if the Doctor were from some other time.

Robert Oliver refreshed the page for the umpteen-thousandth time, and there was a message from the Doctor: "I'm going to put myself in your hard drive now. I'll need to give you instructions on how to reconstitute me. Data to flesh."

Refresh. "First open your webcam software and import my data to the stored media field, so that I'm basically like a video you want to edit."

Robert Oliver wrote this down on a steno pad beside his keyboard.

Refresh. "Put me on the editing queue, but don't edit me. Can't risk ruining this face."

Robert Oliver chuckled as he made more notes.

Refresh. "I embedded the Gallifreyan programming language already within your webcam software. Find the application for it, right click on it, and choose 'run'."

More notes.

Refresh. "This will integrate with your software, and add an extra-special 'oomph' that will help reconstitute me. It will take my data and begin to convert it to energy, which will eventually be made solid."

"Gotcha. Then what?" asked Robert Oliver aloud.

"Once the integration is finished, you'll see a dialogue box that will ask you if you'd like to output the data. Choose yes, then turn on your webcam."

"Is that it?"

"That's it. The Gallifreyan program will do most of the work, you just have to do the commands in the right order and not spill your Earl Grey on the keyboard."

Robert Oliver moved his teacup away from the equipment, and asked the Doctor if he was ready.

"Oh, dear God, yes," answered the Doctor, rather uncharacteristically.

"How long will it take?"

"I'm not sure. Anywhere from two minutes to two weeks. Just be patient."

"Doctor, one more thing."

"Yes?"

"Are you from the future?"

"Yes. And the past."

* * *

><p>Robert Oliver had followed the Doctor's instructions up to running the Gallifreyan programming language in his webcam software. The dialogue box indicated that it would be at least three hours before the integration was complete, so he stood up, opened the blinds and saw, to his surprise, the sun was now up. He felt as if he were looking upon a city waking to a new era. This was untrue of course; he himself was simply opening his eyes to new possibilities, technologies and phenomena that had literally made him view the world completely differently. Perhaps it was just that he couldn't quite comprehend how the same old London could go on ticking in exactly the same way, even today.<p>

He refilled his cold cup with hot Earl Grey, drank it with some toast, took a shower, watched the morning news, and watered the plants. When he returned to the computer, there was still an hour to go in the integration process, so he went to the market for some yoghurt and filled up the car with petrol.

Finally, he returned to a dialogue box asking if he'd like to output. He said clicked on 'yes' and then turned on the webcam.

A bright green, oscillating light emerged from the webcam in a triangular shape. Projected upon the air in the middle of the room, was a life-size outline of a man. Almost immediately, white rubber from a pair of trainers became visible upon the floor. A searing yellow light began moving back and forth just on top of the rubber soles, like a scanning laser, and what looked like golden pixie dust began to surround the entire outline.

The computer's dialogue box appeared on the screen with a message. Though, it was a mess of geometric shapes and lines. Robert Oliver guessed that it was telling him how long the process of downloading the Doctor would take, and wished that he could understand.

* * *

><p>Fourteen hours later, the Doctor had feet, ankles, legs, hips and a torso. Robert Oliver brought his old dormitory television into the study and hooked up the DVD player, then microwaved a big bowl of popcorn around ten that night. Just as he was sitting down to finally watch the Japanese version of "The Ring," he noticed that a curve was forming at the tops of the Doctor's arms.<p>

"Shoulders!" he said aloud, slapping the headless Doctor on the back. "Way to go, mate."

As the film played, he watched out of the corner of his eye as the tiny, bright light continued to run back and forth along the top of the developing Doctor's being, and the golden dust illuminated the room.

When "The Ring" ended, the Doctor's shoulders were fully formed, the neck was starting and it was definitely time for bed. Robert Oliver had to work in the morning.

Nevertheless, he scribbled a note on a post-it and left it on the screen for the Doctor to see, "Wake me as soon as you're you again." For, he reckoned that the head would only take another two or hours or so, judging by how long toes-to-shoulders had taken, and he didn't like the idea of this very strange man (though no longer a stranger) knocking about in his house, manipulating his computer and downloading a bunch of people in his study while he slept.

* * *

><p>But no-one woke him in the night, and Robert Oliver rolled out of bed at six the next morning, a Monday, and wondered, with a measure of dread, what he would find in the study.<p>

To his shock, after six hours, the Doctor still only had a chin, lips, a nose and eyes, but the top of his head was still forming.

"Seriously?" he asked aloud, with exasperation. He sighed, inwardly telling himself that _of course_ the head would take much longer, proportionally, than the rest of the body. That's where the brain was, and the Doctor certainly had a complex one of those.

"Well, blimey, I can't leave you like this."

He reached for his phone, which was lying on the desk beside the printer, then sat down in the leather office chair. He dialled his work number, and while he was waiting for someone to pick up, he looked up at the impossible downloading figure in the middle of the room. The process was now officially creepy. He could reach out and touch the Doctor's body, and it was clearly made of matter - a suit of brown polyester, skin like skin, presumably bones underneath. But the Doctor was not at all conscious at the moment, just a very tall decoration. He now had a face, and his eyes stared out glassily at nothing, though he was clearly alive… It was like having one of those oddly life-like mannequins in the house. He wished he could put a blanket over the Doctor's head, but he had no idea what that would do to the downloading process. Hell, if humans could become data, then who's to say that a fleece throw wouldn't interfere with digital processing.

"Hello, Hindman-Pryce Enterprises, how may I direct your call?" a nasal female voice said into the phone.

"Erm, is this Gemma?"

"Yes, it is, sir. How may I direct your call?"

"This is Robert Oliver Ephraim. Can I please speak to Mr. Branscombe?"

"May I tell him what this is in reference to?"

Robert Oliver cleared his throat violently, then adopted a scratchy-voiced, solemn air. "I, erm, am calling in sick. Got a terrible cold."

She put him on hold, and within a few moments, a male voice picked up.

"Mr. Ephraim, I hear we're a bit under the weather?"

"Yes," said Robert Oliver, coughing unconvincingly. "I'm sorry, sir."

"Now, come on," Branscombe said good-naturedly. "You can't fool me. Gemma said you sounded fine until you said you were calling in sick. What's going on?"

"Erm… I beg your pardon?"

"Robert Oliver, I'm your supervisor, but I'm also your friend. You can tell me. It's Tish, isn't it? She came home smashed from her hen night and you're still helping her puke it off, aren't you?"

"Yes," Robert Oliver said, forgetting to get rid of the scratchy voice. Then he cleared his throat and tried again. "Yes. You've got me, Alan. Sorry I tried to lie to you."

"Hey, it's all right. The last time you had a day off was four years ago - why don't you take tomorrow as well?"

Robert Oliver glanced at the Doctor. "I may have to."

"Okay, fine. And the day after that, if you want. Just let me know, yeah?"

"Sure, thanks, Alan."

He hung up, and sat back to watch the strange phenomenon of the man from the future (or was it the past?) downloading in his study, which had now become a right nuisance.

* * *

><p>Sitting with his feet up and a Diet Coke, Colombia versus Ireland on the telly, Robert Oliver nodded off.<p>

"Erm, hello?" he heard in his sleep.

He sat up with a start. "What? What's that?"

The Doctor was standing over him with the post-it stuck to his finger. "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you," he said. Then he showed him the note. "It said to wake you up."

"Yeah, I wrote that last night, mate," Robert Oliver said, grumpily. "What time is it?"

He glanced at the TV, and some talking head was reporting on how Ireland had kicked the crap out of the South Americans.

"Oddly, I don't know," replied the Doctor. He turned and looked in the corner of the computer screen. "Looks like it's about eight p.m."

"Really? What day?"

"I don't know. Is that a factor?"

Robert Oliver didn't answer, but rather stood up and grabbed his phone off the desk again. He pressed a few buttons and studied the display. "Well, at least it's still Monday."

"Monday?" asked the Doctor. "Wow. We've been at this since…"

"Yeah, Saturday night. I know."

"It took this long for me to download?"

"Yep – eighteen hours. I had to call in sick!"

"Sorry about that. But I did say I didn't know. It could have been a lot worse."

"Oh, don't worry about it Doctor, it's been fun," Robert Oliver told him sarcastically. "Had a whole 'watch the Doctor download' party around you. Dressed you up in a grass skirt and a lei, put a Mai Tai in your hand, draped girls in bikinis on you and took pictures. It was a bloody good time."

Sensing the irritation, the Doctor sighed. "Thank you, Robert Oliver, for your help."

"Yeah, yeah, you're welcome."

"It is very much appreciated."

"I know," he said.

"But aren't you glad you're going to get Tish back."

"Sure I am," Robert Oliver agreed curtly, downing the rest of a warm beer.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Just that I know you're going to ask me to help you download all the others."

The Doctor scrunched his eyes and pulled in some air through clenched teeth. "Ooh, yeah, I probably am."

"Great," said Robert Oliver, sinking down onto the shapeless white sofa. "Although, I'm going to guess that _that_ won't help." He was pointing at his computer upon the desk.

The Doctor turned and saw the CPU smoking.

"Shit!" he cried out. "Unplug it!"

Robert Oliver made a dive under the desk and pulled the power strip out of the wall. The television, computer and lights in the room all went out.

"Now what?" he asked the Doctor.


	27. Chapter 27

**I'm not sure if Brits use the phrase "weirded-out" as Americans do, but it was a very appropriate phrase for what I felt Robert Oliver might be feeling, so I went with it...**

**I believe that this is the second-to-last chapter, perhaps third-to-last. I'm already feeling nostalgic! This story represents almost a year of my life, and it has been, to say the least, an extaordinary year! Thanks for sticking by me in my weird little foray into the digital world...**

* * *

><p><span>NOW<span>

As the Doctor ran frantically out of Robert Oliver's flat with the smoking CPU in his arms, he thought about the strange turn of events he had experienced over the past year, starting with discovering his future son's dead body in the basement of a house he'd happened upon with Martha. This had led to revelations about time and the flux and flow of the universe - they were certainly revelations for Martha, anyway. She learned from him, and from her pregnancy, that their son's birth (and possibly his conception) were fixed points in time that cannot be altered, and that other types of events surrounding the birth were changeable. The Doctor remembered reading in their son's memoir that "Aunt Tish" had some context for what a Time Lord was, but that "Uncle Robbo," the man called Robert Oliver, currently chasing after him with a webcam, keyboard and mobile phone in his hand, did not.

Well, that was one changeable notion that was about to change today. The TARDIS was parked across the street, and he had no choice but to invite Robert Oliver into it.

He stopped at the kerb, and turned to face the befuddled systems analyst.

"Okay, Robert Oliver, do you see that blue box parked across the street?"

Robert Oliver squinted. "Well, yeah. Now you mention it, yeah."

The Doctor sighed. "Well, we're about to go inside it, and it will probably change your perception of the world as you know it. But I don't have time to explain, I'm just going to need you to ignore your surroundings, focus, and do what I tell you. Can you do that?"

"We're going in _there?" _Robert Oliver asked. "Together?"

"Yes, Robbo, the clock is ticking. Focus, yeah?"

Robert Oliver nodded awkwardly, not fully understanding what he was agreeing to. "Sure, yeah. Whatever you say."

Without a word, the Doctor turned and ran, and his newfound, if reluctant, companion followed. They burst in through the double doors of the TARDIS and headed up the ramp.

The Doctor showed Robert Oliver a USB connector on the console, and told him he could probably find the proper cable in the mess of wires and equipment in the cupboard beneath the controls. Robert Oliver dove down and started to search.

A little surprised, the Doctor came round and asked, "You okay?"

Robert Oliver looked up. "No, I'm not. I'm really weirded-out by all this, but you said to ignore it, didn't you?"

"Yeah. So few people ever actually take my advice…" the Doctor replied, shrugging. "Okay then. Good man. When you find the cable, hook it up."

The Doctor searched about for a standard Philips screwdriver and found one under a panel beneath the metal floor. He opened up the side of the CPU, and large billow of grey smoke came out. This time, he searched his pocket for the very non-standard sonic screwdriver, and aimed it at the circuit board containing the hard drive info inside. The instrument made an unpleasant noise, and the Doctor cursed.

"Damn it," he snapped.

"What?"

"I should have had you bring Martha back first, then the baby," he said. "As it is, having you do me first, it overloaded your hard drive and literally burned it out."

"It wouldn't have done that with Martha and the baby?"

"Well, no, because frankly, it was my brain that overloaded this thing. Martha's human – it would have been able to handle her, and the baby is small – no problem there. But then once they were reunited, she would have her Spidey senses back, and would have known how to fix all this just the way I can and… ugh, I'm such an idiot sometimes!"

"Wait, what?"

"But then again, she has all those other girls in her brain right now, so that wouldn't have worked either. Great plan, Doctor. Superb," he said to himself aloud.

"Doctor, what do you mean _Martha's human_?"

"What do you mean, _what do I mean?_ She's human – what's hard about that?"

"That implies that you're…"

"…not. But it's okay. I'm still the same guy."

Robert Oliver opened his mouth to speak. Then he thought better of it. After another few moments he said, "Okay, you know what? I'm really not that surprised. But I'm ignoring it and focusing. I'm not finding the cable I need."

"Never mind – we won't be able to do it the way I thought."

"Is it going to take eighteen hours to get back each person?"

"It would have," the Doctor answered, tucking into his own keyboard and computer screen. "Well, no, more like twelve. Except for Martha. Except! We don't have time for that because the CPU is fried and the hard drive is degenerating, and I'm not sure how fast. We're going to have to take the express route."

He dashed back over to the CPU and gently began extracting the very delicate circuit board, coughing as he did so.

"What's the express route?"

"Well, you know how we had to integrate the Gallifreyan programming language to get me back?"

"Yeah, whatever that means."

"Well, _it means_ that it made your software slightly sentient, slightly alive. It means that it can slowly convert data into energy, and matter is energy. It just… condenses it in a way."

"Oh. Interesting."

"And like I said, we don't have time to repeat that particular process even once more, but we still need the sentient Gallifreyan piece of the puzzle, so…"

He cradled the circuit board in his hand as he brought it to another part of the console. He opened a tray and inserted it, almost like a rectangular CD, and the console seemed to swallow it up.

"So, Robbo, when this is all over, Martha and I will spring for a new computer, yeah?"

"What made you say that now?"

"Pretty much the fact that the control console just ate your hard drive and melted it down into essence."

"What?"

"Did I not mention it would do that?"

"No, you skipped that part," Robert Oliver said with his hands on his hips. "What about all my other data?"

"We'll do our best - we'll be able to save most of it, but... perspective. Do you want your girlfriend back or not?" The Doctor didn't wait for an answer. "So. The girls and the baby and that Windselt bloke, they're all floating around now as unconstituted data-slash-energy, never to return to your hard drive. And as such… this better bloody work!"

With that, he ripped open a panel just below the tray, about eight inches wide and two inches in height. Inside, a bright light could be seen, that seemed to flow between ethereal green and gold. "Here goes nothing," he muttered, thrusting his hands into the opening. Almost immediately, his hands began to burn, and he screamed out in protest. His flesh was now in heart of the TARDIS, in a whirling nest of radiant energy that no flesh-and-blood being was meant to be exposed to. Taking huge gulps of this energy had once nearly killed a good friend, and _had_, in fact, once killed him.

The energy within burned off skin cells and read the Doctor's essence, energy signature, and fed from his power stores. It was, of course, a familiar essence, a consciousness with which the TARDIS had been communing for over eight hundred years. But this was a direct hit, a full impromptu dose of Gallifreyan energy, along with the actual Doctor's conscious thoughts. Software bouncing about, integrating with what the Doctor was giving. Ones and zeroes made alive. Two fields of data meshed, all in one very intense act.

The Doctor continued to scream out, wondering if he would be poisoned first, or pass out.

"Doctor, stop it! What are you doing?" Robert Oliver yelled out, hating to see anyone in the throes of something so painful.

"Can't!" the Doctor hollered back. "Hook up the webcam! Hurry! Where I showed you!"

Robert Oliver quickly obeyed.

Then the Doctor commanded, "Turn it on, and look at the screen!"

What Robert Oliver saw on the screen was the same geometric gibberish he'd seen when reconstituting the Doctor.

"I can't read it!"

The Doctor closed his eyes and concentrated. The message translated itself to English within a few seconds, and the dialogue box asked him if he wanted to use the webcam for output. He didn't have to ask what to do – he selected yes.

"Okay, mate," the Doctor panted. "First things first!" Once again he closed his eyes and concentrated.

A bright green, triangular light came out of the webcam then, a familiar phenomenon to Robert Oliver. The outline of a woman, approximately five-foot-four and dressed in a poufy gown, appeared. Within five seconds, Tish was standing in front of him, in the flesh.

She squeaked in surprise when she saw him. Totally speechless, they embraced with a monstrous amount of relief.

"Oi!" called out the Doctor after a few seconds, breaking up the epic hug. "I need you to do it for each one!"

One by one, Robert Oliver chose to use the webcam for output in order to reconstitute each girl. In a few minutes, all fourteen of the remaining "original" intact brides were standing, befuddled, in the TARDIS console room. Unfortunately, Amanda Finernan had been the casualty – there was nothing that anyone could do for her now.

"Doctor, what about Martha?" Tish asked, coming closer. "What happened with her?"

"Just give me a few minutes, Tish," the Doctor replied as calmly as he could with his hands in the fire. He closed his eyes and seemed to freeze.

* * *

><p>He felt himself pulling back from the room, from the people around him, and diving deeper into a kind of fire. But it wasn't fire, more like warmth manifest.<p>

He had one word in his mind: _Martha._ He was in an intangible place now, data floating about and oscillating and releasing, but he was still him – he still knew where he stood and with whom. He still knew the facts, and he knew his hearts. He felt love, even now, and longed to find her again.

He thought of her – how he could get lost in her dark, brilliant eyes, and how their personalities and minds danced with one another, even before she had her special Time Lord abilities. He thought of her voice, both the excited tones of his travelling companion who would run and jump and raise hell with him on different planets throughout the vast universe, and the deeper, smoother tones of a lover, pulling him in, seducing him with her words and breath. He thought of how her silky brown skin felt beneath his fingertips, and how different nuances of that same skin could be so different. The sinewy calves and suede-like knees, soft, forgiving thighs and hips.

And suddenly he felt conscious again, and realised he was comfy, he was home. All of those thoughts became one, surrounded him and cradled him. He was with her. He couldn't see her or hear her or speak to her, but he could sense her all around him, her oscillating frequency, her data, her essence. He had found her.

It hadn't been like finding the other girls. Martha was, by necessity, a more complex woman, with literally the souls, essences, the entire beings of seven other people embedded within. She had had to go deeper and disintegrate just that little bit in order to let the others in. She had paid for their lives with an unraveling of her mind, but now, he knew he could get her back.

He tried to convey to her some message of love, just _something _that let her know that he was there and that she was the most important thing in the universe. He needed her back. He needed her body and her voice and her energy, he needed her eyes and smile and warmth.

_Give me the others_, he then tried to say to her. _Put them on me, so you can be you again._

He felt the energy around him yield somehow – something in her being gave way, and she seemed to lose a kind of cohesion again. She had been holding on tight to those girls she had saved, but now she gave them up willingly. This was comforting to him, because she would never give them up without a fight, unless it was to someone she knew she could trust. It meant she knew he was there.

If he had been constituted then, he would have smiled. As it was, he simply flushed with happiness and warmth, and prepared to bring her home.

* * *

><p>"Something about this is really weird," Tish commented, looking the Doctor over.<p>

"Is there anything about this that _isn't_?" asked Linnea Mays, who was, as always, a kind of spokesperson for the brides.

The Doctor was deathly still, hands in the console, eyes shut tight, sweating bullets. All at once, he let out a violent exhale, and the dialogue box came up on the screen again. And again, one by one, Robert Oliver helped the Doctor reconstitute human bodies, and seven more women appeared, none the worse for wear, in the console room. They all looked down at their bodies and seemed to be surprised, and rejoiced with one another. A couple of them sang just to test their voices, and almost all of them cried with the overwhelming emotion of it.

* * *

><p>The essence of Martha Jones was now pared down to a single, yet complex, data code. She was no longer a zip file containing giant chunks of other data. He was no longer surrounded by her, he was just with her. They interfaced.<p>

"Let's go find him," the Doctor's essence seemed to say.

Together they navigated the space and sought out their precious, unborn pride and joy. At the same time, their energy grew fuller, brighter, stronger, happier. As for emotions, they felt a sense of purpose and responsibility and pure, cautious ecstasy.

"He's here," Martha seemed to say.

She did not hesitate to wrap herself around him.

The Doctor then withdrew.

And suddenly, reunited with her family, then she knew how to withdraw as well.

And the next thing they all knew, the pinstripe-clad Doctor and his pregnant companion were standing fully formed beside the console, gripping one another as though they'd never see tomorrow.

* * *

><p>After a not-that-long but very intense kiss that made everyone else look away, she gazed up, starry-eyed, knowing she looked goofy and not caring. "You became the CPU," she mused to the Doctor.<p>

He smiled back, also knowing he looked a bit daft. "Yeah, sort of. Point and think… you know."

For about fifteen seconds, no one said anything. The Time Lord and his human companion just held hands drank in one another – their smiles and each others' eyes.

At long last, Tish cleared her throat loudly. This seemed to snap the Doctor and Martha out of their stupor, and they turned to face her. "Sorry," they muttered sheepishly.

"So, is everyone okay?" Tish asked. It was a general question, but she was looking pointedly at the Doctor as she asked.

"Almost everyone," he told her. "Hold on for departure, kids."


	28. Chapter 28

**I'm not sure whether everyone will agree with the Doctor's actions in this chapter, but... I felt this "solution," such as it is, was very Doctor. I know many of you will side with Linnea, and I can't blame you, but I'll ask you the same thing as the Doctor asks her: What would you have him do?**

**Okay... this is not quite the end yet! ONE MORE chapter!**

* * *

><p><span>OVER THE NEXT WEEK<span>

The whole group (save for the Doctor and Martha) gasped when Windselt appeared in the console room. Like the rest of them, he had been the result of output by Robert Oliver's webcam and the Doctor's special Gallifreyan "language" interfacing with data in Robert Oliver's defunct hard drive. The wispy villain himself was far too surprised to speak with any sort of bravado, and eventually just set about asking what was going to happen to him. The Doctor simply told him to walk out the door.

Windselt walked over to the TARDIS' door, and peeked out.

"It's my planet," he said.

"Yep," the Doctor said. "Go home, Windselt. And for goodness' sake, mind your own business from now on, eh?"

"Pardon me?"

"Go home."

"That's it?" Tish cried out. "He brought havoc upon the lives of dozens of innocent people, tried to kill us all, including you and your little family, and that's all you have to say to him? Go home?"

Uncertain herself, Martha said, "Tish, I think…" then she looked at the Doctor. "It's better this way?"

"He was brought to our part of the universe by accident," the Doctor said. "And trapped there. I choose to believe he was doing what came naturally under unfortunate circumstances."

"Really?" asked Tish.

"I guess you have to _want _to see it," Martha offered her.

The Doctor added, "He'll keep his nose clean now," staring holes into Windselt's eyes. It wasn't a speculation – it was an order.

"Doctor, I don't think this is right," Linnea Mays piped up.

"Okay, then, Miss Mays, what would you like to do with him?" asked the weary Time Lord.

"I don't know! Punish him!"

"Punish him how?"

"Put him in jail! Kill him!"

Calmly, the Doctor said. "I don't kill. Besides, even if I could entertain the idea, he's non-corporeal. What weapon would you like to recommend? And for that matter, what jail would hold him?"

"Well then, just put him back in the big computer and let him bounce around as data," she said to the Doctor.

"If we send him home, the odds of him coming back to haunt us are very slim, consdering how he got there in the first place. Like I said – it was basically an accident. He's not as sophisticated as he'd have us all believe. It would take him ages to work out how to punch his way back through. And to what end? He's already got the message that he can't steal a Time Lord consciousness because there isn't a Time Lord alive who would allow it, is there? However, if we put him back into the computer… well, we know what he'll do if we send him back there."

"Then disperse him, like he did to Amanda!"

The Doctor got slightly wound up now. He gritted his teeth. "He killed her. What part of _I don't kill _don't you understand?"

Martha chimed in, "Haven't you ever heard the phrase _an eye for an eye makes everyone blind?"_

"Doctor, I must protest!" Miss Mays shouted.

He took two steps forward and stood quite close to her. In a low tone, he said, "Miss Mays, when you have your own spaceship, you can decide what happens to the non-corporeal beings on it. Until then, this is my turf. Okay?"

She put her hands on her hips and clicked her tongue at him.

"Now, Windselt," the Doctor said, he said, turning toward the nonplussed alien. "You so much as have a thought of the Earth, even contemplating making a phone call to the Earth, or visiting a ghost friend of yours at the bottom of the sea… I'll… well, I'll ring up Miss Mays and give her the keys to the red button. Are we understood?"

"Quite. Goodbye, Doctor. Robert Oliver." Then he added, with a haughty sniff and a sarcastic air, "Ladies, I hope there are no hard feelings."

* * *

><p>Fourteen women, fourteen different homes. Fourteen families who were immensely glad to see them.<p>

All except for one.

"I hate this part," the Doctor sighed, and he knocked on the door to the flat in front of them.

A man who had aged considerably over the past few months, and who likely would continue to age quickly, answered the door. He had been large when last the Doctor and Martha had seen him. Now, by comparison, he looked emaciated.

"Mr Fineran," the Doctor said.

The man's lips tightened, and he seemed to lose his breath. He had seen the two "detectives" before, and he knew why they were there.

"Yes," he managed meekly.

"May we come in?" asked the Doctor.

The man allowed them in, and called for the rest of the family. Once everyone was seated in the parlour, the Doctor delivered the bad news.

"I'm afraid we have confirmed that Amanda is dead," he said. After a long pause, he added, "We are very sorry for your loss."

Everyone – the grandmother, the father, the fiancé, the sister – they all nodded solemnly, and tears fell into silent air.

Only the mother wept openly. Her shoulders shook as her entire body was taken in sadness.

Martha couldn't look at her. For the millionth time in the past six months, she thought about motherhood, loss, the eternal, visceral need to protect one's child from harm and the eventual, crippling realisation that it is impossible to shelter them from everything. Mrs. Fineran had no idea, and would never know, what killed her daughter, because it was not feasible to explain it to her.

But Martha Jones knew what was out there, the myriad of strange phenomena and malevolent forces in the universe. She was only, as-yet, a mother-to-be, but she already felt she knew this woman's pain.

"Excuse me, please," she said, standing, leaving the room. She stepped out onto the front porch for some air.

The Doctor told the Fineran family, as planned, that a perpetrator had been identified and pursued, but that he had died in a relatively quiet standoff with law enforcement. He had kinapped a total of fifteen women and held them in a disused arsenal at an undisclosed location. There, some remains had been identified as their daughter, and because of some exposure to chemical radiation, had to be incinerated and "properly" disposed of. They would never be able to release the ashes to the family, unfortunately.

"What do you mean _an undisclosed location?_" the mother spat, between tears. "It sounds like a bloody cover-up!"

"Clarice, leave it," the father sighed. "Let's just have a nice memorial for her and move on with our lives, all right."

"Gerald, I…"

"Being pissed off at the police isn't going to bring her back. They did their job, can't you just…"

The Doctor sighed to himself as the parents of Amanda Fineran kicked off and began an unwinnable spat. "I'll just show myself out," he muttered awkwardly.

* * *

><p>They walked down the front steps, hand-in-hand, toward the blue box parked across the street.<p>

"Doctor," Martha asked cautiously. "Do you think there are others in that website that we didn't find? Who will be stuck in there forever?"

The Doctor sighed. "Based on who we were dealing with, the eight million e-mails and the number of rooms there were in there…"

"…yeah, I think so too."

"We can't always save everyone, you know that. Sometimes it comes down to just saving _someone_. We could probably spend years in that labyrinth looking for people and never find them all. Not to mention, I doubt he's the only 'autonomous' being on the internet who has found a way to do that."

"Bloody lovely," she said bitterly.

"Well, we'll just wait for one of them to mess up and make himself known, like this one did. No-one can attain as much power as Windselt wanted, without attracting attention."

"I hope you're right," she conceded. "And I hope I'm helpful to you."

"You're always helpful to me," he said. "What would make you say something like that?"

She looked pointedly at the bump which had re-claimed its residence below her ribcage. "He doesn't get to live in me forever. A couple more months, and I'll just be Charlie Gordon again."

"Charlie Gordon?" he asked, opening the door to the TARDIS, holding it ajar for her.

"Yeah, the mentally disabled bloke from _Flowers for Algernon,_ who became a genius from some lab experiment,_" _she elaborated, stepping through. "He discovered, as a genius, the experiment was flawed and his mental abilities couldn't last, and he would revert. He had to literally watch himself deteriorate."

"Deteriorate? Martha!" He let out an exasperated breath and came up the ramp. "You were never _just_ Charlie Gordon, you know."

"So I'm not mentally disabled, okay," she shrugged. "But feeling that big slow-down a little while ago when I didn't have the Time Lord thing… that was hard. Really hard."

"You're missing the point. Twofold. First of all, it won't happen all in one shot like before. It will ebb away gradually and you'll hardly notice. Maybe you think that's worse, but you should look on the bright side: being a Time Lord can be… well, whatever the opposite of a _load of giggles _is. And, Martha… we're having a baby – trust me, nothing else will matter. Also, you should know, most new parents feel like idiots anyway, Time Lords or not."

"But you won't be a new parent," she pointed out.

"Near enough," he sighed, leaning against the controls.

He continued. "And you were never _just_ anything. You're not _just_ human, and you're not _just_ a medical student, and you're not _just _really, really clever," he assured her. Then his tone changed to one of great enthusiasm. "You're human! And you're a medical student! And you're really, really clever! And you are Martha Jones!"

He was very childlike just now. She put her hands on her hips and stared at him with a suppressed laugh. "Are you patronizing me?"

"Maybe a little," he confessed." But don't you see? That Time Lord thing… it's a bit handy to have it about, but it's not why I need you. I need _you_."

"Okay," she said slowly, giving in like someone who is beaten, but with a smile.

"And, I should be asking myself, am I going to be helpful to you."

"Why is that?"

"I haven't changed a nappy in… well, centuries."

* * *

><p>"Hello, can I… oh, hello," Fiona Hart said. "Martha, is it?"<p>

"Yes," said Martha with a smile.

The shopkeeper looked at the Doctor. "And…?"

"Yeah, I'm the guy who helped with your computer," he said with a smirk, marvelling at the ironic understatement. He knew she was looking for a name, but…

"Come to make a final decision?" Miss Hart asked, looking Martha over. Martha became aware that she hadn't been in the shop in several months, and she must look a lot _rounder_ than she had the last time. "Dear, I'm afraid that I can't guarantee we can accommodate you at the moment."

"No, not here to buy a dress," Martha said.

"I'm here to offer my services as your new web designer," the Doctor said.

"Excuse me?"

"I want to re-tool your website," he repeated. "New domain, new… ones and zeroes. Free of charge."

She attempted a smile. "I'm happy with my current set-up."

The Doctor made a face. "Aw, no you're not," he insisted, and pushed past her, making a beeline for her office.

"Erm, excuse me!" she protested, following him back through the now-familiar curtain, into the rough brick storage room and through to the office.

The Doctor pushily sat down in Fiona's leather swivel chair and began minimizing all of the boxes on her screen. "Just trust me," he said to her, basically ignoring her.

"Sir, this is highly improper! I'm afraid I'm going to have to…"

"Listen," he said, looking at her seriously. "I fixed your computer before, didn't I? Have you had any trouble since?"

"No, admittedly."

"Well, good. Now, believe me when I tell you that your website is corrupted and people who visit it are in danger."

"Of what?"

"Of… catching a virus. A nasty one."

Fiona Hart sighed. She looked away from the Doctor for a few moments, then she looked at him again. "Is that true?"

"Yep." It wasn't _quite_ true, but he wanted that domain lost forever, to the ages. It would mean that anyone left trapped in it would die, but he reckoned that given the alternative of staying there for inifinity, possibly injured and mutilated like the girls Martha had found, this might actually be preferable.

"Fine. But what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to find a new domain for you set it up, and then I will give you an e-mail address for any kind of troubleshooting you may desire. Just drop me a line and I'll come running."

"But I liked the old system. I was used to it – the bank card reader, the order functions, all that."

"Well, then, sit here with me and tell me how it used to work. I'll set it up however you want."

"For free?" she asked, sceptically.

"Yeah."

"Why would you do that for free?"

He looked at her, surprised at the question. "I dunno. I guess I'm a nice guy, and I like you."

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, Martha wandered back out to the TARDIS. She was not in the market for a wedding gown, nor a retro-chic garment of any kind, so she decided to get online and track the Doctor's progress. From the screen on the console, she watched as the new website for Audacious Attire was set up.<p>

She smiled as she did so. The domain was one not of this planet. The digital language behind it was in Gallifreyan, which made it about ninety-nine per cent impervious to any virus, malware, spyware or energy-converting aliens that the current known universe could possibly want to throw at an independent website in planet Earth, even without any firewall or anti-virus protection. The embedded codes were simply too complex and incompatible with _everything _else. The Doctor would give Fiona a way into the site in order to post new information without it getting lost, but everything else, good and bad, would simply be swallowed up by the Gallifreyan code.

The Doctor said he was going to leave an e-mail address that would send Fiona's messages to the TARDIS, should she ever need his help with the site, but Martha could see that this was a digital fortress. Fiona would never have any issues with it – the Doctor was seeing to that.

As Martha watched, Fiona chose a new colour scheme and new display features for her site (trendy chocolate brown, baby pink and light turquoise, a vast improvement, Martha thought), the Doctor configured a user-friendly payment system, and before she knew it, the new site was "live." Just for good measure, she pulled her own sonic screwdriver from a compartment below the console and checked for encryptions. The site practically zapped her, shocked her even for trying to find encryption. Martha chuckled.

"Airtight," she commented.


	29. Chapter 29

**Hello all! And goodbye all! This is the final chapter! I began this story a year ago, almost to the day, and it has been one of the most frustrating and difficult writing endeavors. Thank you to everyone who got involved and stayed with me, and to those of you who gave me advice and lingo over the miles!**

**As you probably will notice, there is potential for another continuation, but for the moment I'm not making any promises. I hope you like the way this ends, even though there is a bit of doom and gloom. It was inevitable, what with the way their child's life is to go, I felt. It seemed right to end with a foot forward into the next great adventure in their lives, but also I wanted to have at least something of a high note...**

**Anyway, here's the end of one of my own personal great adventures - though as always, I do have a few other ideas on the horizon. Thanks again, and enjoy!**

* * *

><p><span>ON THE DAY OF THE WEDDING: EPILOGUE<span>

Francine Jones was having quite a bit of trouble holding back the tears as she adjusted the veil on her daughter's head. Tish simply stared into the mirror, half in bliss and half in disbelief. She almost couldn't fathom that the day was here – partly because after the internet debacle had begun, she didn't really think she'd survive long enough to get married.

"You look beautiful," Francine sniffed.

Tish smiled. "Thanks, mum."

"The dress is perfect."

"Mostly, yeah," Tish agreed, keeping in mind that choosing this dress had almost got her killed.

"Only thing missing is the bouquet. Where is it?"

"Some of the flowers started to wilt, so I sent Martha back down to the florists' lorry to get a few new daisies, and some to spare," she told her mother.

As if scripted, Martha walked through the door at that point, wearing her taupe bridesmaid dress, and carrying Tish's refurbished bouquet in one hand, and a small black plastic bucket of daisies in the other hand. "Here you go," she said. "If you run out of daisies now, it will be your own fault."

Behind her, a man with a priestly collar stuck his head in the door. "Letitia, your first guests are being seated," he said. "We have about a half hour."

"Thank you, Father O'Hanlon," Tish answered.

The priest closed the door lightly, and Francine piped up. "Martha, that reminds me. I've spoken to Father O'Hanlon about a christening."

Martha sighed. On any other day, she might have taken that exception and run with it, but today was not the day for it. She wondered if her mother had chosen _now_ to bring it up, because she'd known that Martha would never protest hard enough to ruin Tish's wedding day.

"Okay, mum, we'll talk about it later," Martha said.

"I mean… I don't know what the Doctor's beliefs are. I don't suppose he's Catholic…" Francine said, trailing off coyly.

Martha laughed. "No, I don't suppose he is," she said, thinking how interesting it was that her mother hadn't set foot in a church for anything other than weddings or funerals in at least ten years, and never talked about God or anything remotely spiritual, but _now_ she was all about it.

Something occurred to Martha at that moment. She turned to her sister, who was admiring herself in profile in the mirror. "What do you think, Tish?"

"About what?"

"About christening our baby?"

Tish reacted with predictable surprise. "Why should it matter what I think?"

"Mum," Martha said. "Will you give us a little sisterly alone time?"

"Er, okay," Francine said, suspiciously. "I'll be next door helping Leo with his bowtie if you need me." She left the room reluctantly, frowning.

Tish turned excitedly and hugged her sister. "I can't believe I'm here!" she exclaimed. "Thanks to you, and I mean it. Thank you, honestly. I'd be lost to the internet if it weren't for you and that non-Catholic Doctor of yours."

Distractedly, Martha said, "You're welcome, Tish. Listen, I know you have a million things on your mind today, but it's such an important day, and… well, you know, it's a wedding. It's all about family – you and Robert Oliver joining each other's families, becoming family to one another."

Tish smiled. "Sure."

"So I have a family thing to bring up, and it seems like a good… Tish, I need to ask you something," Martha said.

"Okay, clearly. What is it?"

Martha gulped. "We'd like you and Robert Oliver to be godparents to our son."

Tish's face melted, and she took Martha's hands. "Oh, Martha," she whispered. "That's… amazing. And it means so much to me that you would trust us with this."

"Take some time, think on it, talk it over with Robert Oliver after the honeymoon, and let us know," Martha told her. "Just know that… well, you've seen what our lives are like. You may wind up…" Martha choked on her words.

_You may wind up taking him in_, Martha wanted to say. But she had choked because she knew the ugly truth of it: there was no _may _about it. Tish and Robert Oliver _would_ wind up taking in and raising her son through his most formative years.

She took a deep breath. "So, if our son someday needs your help - something happens to us, and he has to come live with you, it's going to matter what you think. About a christening or whatever else."

"Martha, you're talking about a one-in-a-million chance," Tish reasoned, though incorrectly. "This is a big 'if.' Raise your son how you see fit, do what _you_ think is best for him – you're his mum. The odds of anything happening…"

"Tish, you know that we can travel in time, right?"

Tish seemed confused. "Er, yeah. I guess."

"Well, sometimes time travellers… we know things."

"What does that mean?"

"It means we find things out, sometimes things we weren't meant to know."

"I see."

"And sometimes, we have to take precautions, either to make history take the course that it's supposed to, or to avoid certain disasters."

"Are you trying to make history take its course right now? Or avoid a disaster?"

With a big sigh, Martha answered, "It's one of those. Maybe both."

"Okay. Are you telling me you _know_…" Tish began.

"I'm not telling you anything," Martha interjected. "I wish I hadn't said anything about... time. Just know that it's not one-in-a-million that something bad will happen to me and the Doctor. You have seen what we do every day. You have seen the kind of rubbish we get into. You have seen that the chances are not exactly _remote _that we both get eaten by something, or incinerated in an interdimensional fire prison or..."

She had stopped talking because the look on Tish's face indicated that she was totally appalled.

And Tish stared at her for a long while. "Okay," she said at last, holding up both hands in disarmed fashion. "I'm going to choose to take what you _just_ said at face value. I'm going to remember that what the two of you do is dangerous, and that something may well happen to you, because it's common sense to keep this in mind. That's right – common sense, that's the answer. I'm going to forget that you said anything about time travel, and try to remain convinced that this is simply a common sense thing. Like if you were a police officer."

"Good," Martha said. "And don't worry, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to die in battle or something. There are other reasons why… you know what? I'm talking too much again. Just… try not to worry."

Tish chuckled. "I hope you're more convincing than that when you tell your child not to worry."

"I'm sorry I put this on you today. I didn't mean for the conversation to go this far. I just wanted to ask you a favour and for you to be happy that I asked, and for everyone to feel all warm inside."

"Well, you _almost_ accomplished it. I _do_ feel warm inside – it's still quite nice that you trust me with your son's life."

Martha was relieved that Tish's tone was remaining light, because she would be well within her rights to be angry with Martha just now.

"Incidentally," Tish added. "Do you happen to know _when_ common sense tells us something will happen?"

"Yes," Martha said. "Do you really want to know?"

Upon quick reflection Tish answered, "No. No, I really don't."

* * *

><p>By the one-hour mark of the wedding reception, Martha reckoned she had already answered at least three thousand questions about her pregnancy. "Do you know whether it's a boy or a girl? Have you thought of a name yet? Are you going to continue with medical school? What colour is your nursery?" Martha didn't mind these, the innocuous questions so much, but she stopped short of commenting on whether she would breastfeed, deliver naturally or have her son circumcised. She felt that questions about people's private parts were really not appropriate for casual acquaintances to ask in the receiving line of a wedding. What was it about a pregnant woman that made everyone forget friendly conversational boundaries? It's like "the bump" caused everyone in the room, not just the mother, to lose their minds.<p>

Dancing with her tall, tuxedo-clad partner, she mused over these questions. The Doctor reported that he'd received much of the same, and that he'd learnt the hard way that "these days" a man can't just plead ignorance on _anything_.

"I don't understand why it's such a big deal if I say _I don't know_," he said. "I mean, yeah, sure, sometimes the truth is just too weird to pass on, but sometimes, I really don't know!"

"It's funny, the truth about our life is often just too weird to pass on, and only now is it becoming a problem."

"It's because people think that the well-being of a baby is everyone's business," said the Doctor. "Maybe they're right, in a way."

"That reminds me," she said. "I asked Tish _the big question_. I hope you don't mind I did it without you. It just felt like the right moment."

"The big question? You mean about being godparents?"

"Yeah," she answered. "Are you upset that I didn't include you?"

"Well… it doesn't matter," he said gravely. "Because _that _reminds _me_: we have bigger problems."

"Aw," Martha whined. "Now what?"

The Doctor stared off into space for a few moments, and then his eyes suddenly began darting round the room. He fixated on an elderly couple in the corner who were being interviewed by the man hired to make the wedding video. The guests were speaking into a microphone, offering their best wishes to the newlyweds.

"Come on," the Doctor said to Martha, taking her hand and dragging her off the dance floor.

They crossed to the elderly couple and arrived just as the "interview" was finishing.

"Hi," said the Doctor to the cameraman. "They got you working hard, eh?"

"Yeah, it's a living," the man said with a smile.

"Have you had a break yet? Had a drink, tried the cake?"

"Er, no," said the cameraman. "I'm on the clock – not supposed to drink or eat."

"Have you had a break at all?"

"Well no, but…"

"Well, give me that thing, then," said the Doctor. "I know how to run it! I'll carry on talking to people, and you can just take five minutes and go to the loo. You've been on your feet – you drink a lot of water, I'm sure."

He didn't wait for the man to hand off the camera, he just started taking it off his hands.

"I _do_ need to use the facilities," the man said, relenting.

"See? Just take a quick load off, and I'll be here when you come back."

"Arg!" the camera man exclaimed, as if torn.

"It's okay," the Doctor assured him. "You won't be gone long enough for me to do any damage, right?"

"Okay, sure," the man said, now suddenly _desperate_ to use the toilet. "I'll be back in _two _minutes!"

"Fine," said the Doctor.

When the man was out of earshot, Martha asked, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Getting an energy signature from the bride and groom," he said.

"What? No, not now, Doctor. Why?"

"Because if we wait, then they'll be off on their honeymoon, and if we wait until after that, it _ might_ be too late."

"Too late for what?"

"I'll show you later."

He dashed off to find Tish and Robert Oliver, who were standing near the cake, talking to one of his aunts.

"Tish, Tish, Tish," the Doctor said boisterously. "Robert Oliver! We must have you on camera giving your two cents! What's a wedding video when everyone weighs in except the bride and groom?"

"Oh, er… okay," Tish said. "What are _you_ doing with the camera? Where's Paul?"

"Paul? The cameraman? Oh, he went to the loo," he said quickly. "Now then, Tish, what would you like to say to Robert Oliver on this happy occasion?"

He fired up the camera and pointed it at Tish, and handed the microphone to Martha. Martha held it in front of Tish's face and they waited for her to speak.

Tish didn't know what to say. "Well," she began. After a pause, she blushed and said, "Doctor, I think I'd like to save this sort of thing for later. It's something that my husband and I should share privately, if you don't mind."

"Oh, sure, no problem," said the Doctor, having got what he needed. "Robert Oliver, what would you like to say to your new lovely wife?"

The groom opened his mouth to speak, surprised at the Doctor's audacity, and then he paused. Then he said, "I'd like to echo my wife's sentiments, Doctor. We'll have this moment later, together."

"Gotcha. Thanks for your time," said the Doctor. With that, he turned and stalked back toward the corner where he'd met the cameraman, and Martha followed, still a bit puzzled.

She didn't ask any questions, though. Partly because she didn't want to know just now, but mostly because she knew the Doctor well enough to know that she wasn't going to get an answer at this time.

"Er, Doctor," she said, looking across the room toward the door opposite. "Paul is on his way back."

"Okay," said the Doctor. He pulled the sonic from his pocket and pressed it against the stem of the microphone, two separate times. He quickly checked the readings of the sonic, and then stuffed it back in his pocket. Then he happily gave the equipment back to Paul the cameraman, and asked Martha if she'd like to resume dancing.

"You're so strange," she commented, once they were swaying together once again.

"Yeah, but you're the one who chooses to live with me," he retorted with a childish grin.

* * *

><p>Back in the console room after the champagne had been drained (though not by Martha… nor the Doctor, as it happened), the last dance had been danced and caterer and DJ had been sent home, the two travellers stood before the computer screen and waited for information to be imparted.<p>

Martha was nervous. The Doctor had been true to form, more or less, during the reception, but on the walk back to the TARDIS he had been unusually sullen. This was a demeanour he normally reserved for rather grave situations, or at least times when he was reluctant to tell Martha the truth.

Finally, the Gallifreyan letters came up on the screen, confirming for the Doctor, once again, his worst suspicion.

"Look," he told her.

What she saw was a line of code and/or an energy signature from the Phlotigo Galaxy, from the planet where Windselt was from. Though, the signature was just different enough to let Martha know that the perpetrator this time was not Windselt – just someone genetically similar. The TARDIS, after the showdown with the wispy fellow, and the interface with the Doctor at the CPU and all the different beings floating about inside her heart, had become unusually sensitive to certain energy signatures. She had picked this one up from various places around London.

They were all places where Martha had been in the past week: the tailor, the church, the reception site, her mother's house, her father's house, Tish and Robert Oliver's flat, her favourite coffee shop… And this ncluded inside the TARDIS itself, which had been parked in the same spot all week. There were traces in the kitchen, the library, the nursery, and the signature was strongest in their bedroom.

"I'm being stalked," Martha whispered.

The Doctor nodded. "Subtly," he said.

"How did this happen?" she asked, trying very hard not to let her voice climb. She felt panic on the inside, knowing she was being stalked by a being who wanted her for its own omnipotence, but that it didn't really want _her_.

"Well, near as I can tell, either Windselt went home and boasted about what he did, and it gave someone else an idea," the Doctor said. "Or, just as likely, they are non-corporeal, and they can become data, they can become thoughts…"

"…the thoughts can mingle with one another."

"You've got it, clever girl," he reported gravely. "I'd never thought about it before, never thought about the implications of an entire population of unconstituted, sentient ectoplasm, all living in close quarters. But now that I'm thinking about it… yeah, I think that they must be telepathic in a way. Maybe they can't even control it – the thoughts just, you know… float."

Martha sighed heavily and sat down on the leather seat. "So the word is out."

"I'm afraid so."

"There's a Time Lord still living, and you can't get _him_… but there's also a little one about to be born, and he'll be easy to mess with."

"Yep."

"How long have you known about this?" she asked.

"Since this morning," he replied.

"But…" she said, pointing vaguely at the screen. "The TARDIS doesn't say that the Phlotigo energy stalked me at the wedding."

"No, because I cloaked you."

"You cloaked me."

He said, "Mm. I still have various remnants of your energy signature in the TARDIS' processor. I copied it and sent it back out onto the internet."

She raised her eyebrows as realisation struck her. "Ohhhh," she said slowly, nodding. "Did you disperse it _just enough_?"

"Yes I did," he told her. "I disassembled it, so that it would look like you died in there. But something of _you_ remains intact, so that they'll be able to recognise you if they go looking. And they will. Once they lost track of you on Earth, in this dimension I mean, that's where they would have searched next."

Martha was nodding with understanding, her eyes wide, and her face alight with relief.

"But there's bad news," said the Doctor.

"I knew you'd say that," her face falling.

"I tried cloaking myself as well. Didn't work."

"How do you know?"

"Because look." He tapped a few keys, and Martha was able to see that the Doctor was now being stalked.

"Shit."

"Well, yeah. I think, though, that once we get out on the open road, they won't be able to catch me. It takes quite a while to get a lock on someone enough to move them about, as Windselt showed us with the girls, and you and I never stay in one place long enough. I think I'll be okay, at least for a while."

"What do you mean, at least for a while?" she asked, her voice rising.

He sighed. "Martha, you know what I mean."

She held her breath. She did know. "This is why we have to give him up."

The Doctor nodded sadly.

"When he's thirteen, they'll get a lock on us from the Phlotigo, and we'll have to leave him with Tish and Robert Oliver."

The Doctor nodded again.

Martha thought about it. She could feel her artificial Time Lord-ness working in her brain now. She asked, "But if we're zooming about time and space, Doctor, it would take these bastards longer than thirteen years to lock onto us."

"Not if we want to slow down for a year and live, say, in London," he shrugged with a kind of resigned sadness.

"Why the hell would we do that?"

"Wouldn't you like to finish medical school?"

"Not if this is the cost!"

"You know it has to happen," he reminded her. "We know how this plays out, Martha."

"We know that he has to…" she gulped. "Die in a basement on some God-forsaken planet in order to save large parts of the known universe from a plague. He can still do that, even if we raise him."

He cocked his head to one said and waited.

Even as she was speaking, the realisation was dawning on her. Their son, the man who would become _The Researcher_, C.J. Ephraim, would not become _that man_ without his time with his surrogate parents. His research and fate hinged on too many smaller things, many of which hinged on Tish and Robert Oliver becoming his stable guardians. The continuum of time is not simply dependent on _events_, as it were, but _circumstances_, setting the scene for events, the whole picture. The Mandala. It was what the Time Lord in her was great at seeing, but what the mother in her found so hard to accept.

Eventually she seemed to lose her impetus and her shoulders slumped. She stared at the floor for a long while.

When she looked up, she stared at the screen and seemed to scrutinise the information. Martha's essence, her human essence, could be cloaked, even with the little Time Lord inside. But the Doctor could not be cloaked – why? Why would the internet allow the baby's lines of code to go by the wayside along with her own, but not the father's?

"It's your regenerative qualities," she realised. Their son, as they knew all too well, would not regenerate. He had one life only – it was one of the things that made him tragically human.

"That was my first thought, too."

"Blimey, you can't even be _virtually_ dead?"

"Apparently not. Regeneration is in my DNA, it's going to be embedded in anything that has my energy signature, so of course my lines of code would be reconstituted if they were dispersed. I didn't realise it at the time, but Windselt couldn't have killed me in that room, even if he'd tried."

"That's nice, but it's bad news for us in the long-run."

"Right. I'm stuck being alive, in every sense of the word," he said flippantly.

"But wait, Doctor. Why can't we just cloak the baby once he's born? Why do we have to run, and eventually dump him on my sister?" she wanted to know. There was no urgency in her voice, only an inquisitiveness.

"Oh yeah, you're right," he said. "Because… he'll be with me, and I can't be cloaked?"

"I guess," she said, thinking still.

After a few moments, their eyes met, and each knew what the other was thinking.

"If he can be cloaked and you can't, and it's _you_ who can be found, then he's safe if he's not with you. Which means he can be safe with me."

"Yes," he said, his eyes closing momentarily.

"Which means that when the time comes, you and I could just…" she whispered. She made a gesture, putting her hands together and then breaking them apart, dissolving their union.

"It's an option," he conceded, looking miserable.

"But it's not a _good _option," she said, a cry rising in her voice. "Frankly, Doctor, it doesn't bode any better for our little family than giving up our child when he's thirteen! I don't know if I can be away from you any more than I can be away from him!"

"I agree," he said. "And either way… I have to let go of him."

"So we stay together, you and I?"

"That's what 'history' tells us. Future history."

"Can we really do that?" she asked, a cry and a muffled whisper combining to make a rasp of a sound. "Can we really choose each other over him?"

"I don't think it will be a question of that. Martha, you're forgetting, once they get a lock on us, on me, then it will be much easier for us to get a lock on them. And I'm guessing that thirteen years from now, it won't just be _one_ Phlotigo being trying to track us down, it will be… well, a lot. If you knew that, and knew what they were capable of, wouldn't you want to stop them?"

"Yes. But it means I'm going to die trying."

He sighed. This had occurred to him a while back, but he wasn't sure how to bring it up.

"Because," Martha continued. "If we dispatched the bad guy and I was left alive, I'd sure as hell go back for my son, and we know that I don't."

"Neither do I," he reminded her.

"True," she said. "But what if we're not successful? What if we go into battle and I die, and you are forced to retreat for some reason… and the Phlotigos are still out to get you? You wouldn't go back for him because he's not safe with you."

He ran his hand down over his face and let out an angry, cathartic "Argh!" as he began to pace.

"Doctor, I don't want to be able to see the big picture anymore," she said softly. "Take it away now, okay?"

"Yeah, welcome to my world," he snapped.

She wasn't offended. She just felt immeasurably sad.

He had left the sonic screwdriver on the console. She picked it up and examined it. She realised then why the Doctor had asked Tish and Robert Oliver to speak into the microphone, and then zapped it with the sonic. "You're going to disperse Tish and Robert Oliver's energy signatures on the internet as well?"

"Yeah," he said. "If the Phlotigos are telepathic, then it's likely they'll know about them – Mr. and Mrs. Ephraim – since Windselt had contact with them. We'll make it look like they died, so no-one will go looking for them, either."

Martha nodded, and set the screwdriver down.

She watched him pace. She thought back over the events that had brought them to this place. She remembered their first meeting in the hospital with him in pyjamas and her in a lab coat, and the immediate spark she had felt, the unexpected surge of lust. She remembered how much it had hurt being told outright that she was not a replacement for the Doctor's previous companion, and how angry with herself she was when she realised a couple weeks later that she was helplessly in love with him. She remembered the horrible three months in 1913, watching him fall for someone else.

She thought about the journey to the planet Third From Pluto where they had discovered the remains of C.J. Ephraim in a basement, and the frisson of wonder they had both felt while reading the man's diaries. She thought about how ecstatic she had been on the day when she realised that he loved her in return and it wasn't just a fevered dream. They kissed in a field, they talked, they made love, and nothing had ever felt so right.

And then the unravelling had begun, revelations about their child, the utterly cruel knowledge showed itself. Such a fantastic high followed by a cruel and painful low.

The love and lust she felt was still alive in her, the electric shock of being touched by him for the first time, even now as he paced across the floor with the weight of worlds in his brain. At that moment, she felt, not for the first, or even the thousandth time, that she would rather die than be without him, and that whatever the fates threw at them, they could wrangle it together.

She smiled a little, and felt warm, in spite of herself.

He stopped pacing and turned to look at her, his hands on his hips in an annoyed stance. "Well, blimey! Gotta love the doom and gloom." His voice was tight and angry.

"Let me help," she said. She picked up the sonic and plugged it into the console, performing the manoeuvre the Doctor had had in mind: she copied her sister and new brother-in-law's data codes, so as not to actually engage their persons, and then set about dispersing their data _just enough_. When she was done, anyone who searched for Tish as a sentient entity, as energy to be attracted, not as a human being with a life, would assume she was dead. Same went for Robert Oliver.

The Doctor watched over her shoulder, and was glad to let her do the work this time.

"And now that all the wedding chaos is over with, let's do what we do best," Martha said, flirtatously. "Something we haven't done in way too long. I'll take the lead."

He raised his eyebrows.

She flipped a few switches on the console and sent the TARDIS out into open space, open time, in search of their next adventure.

THE END


End file.
